


Blasted Pansy

by byourladyhell



Series: The Pansy 'Verse [2]
Category: That was Then This is Now - S. E. Hinton, The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Intimate Partner Violence, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:06:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24327748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byourladyhell/pseuds/byourladyhell
Summary: Soda said he'd grow out of it, but after Mark Jennings decides they'll be buddies Pony begins to understand that he's not just a late bloomer after all.
Relationships: Ponyboy Curtis/Mark Jennings
Series: The Pansy 'Verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2111469
Comments: 93
Kudos: 140





	1. Chapter One

**Chapter One**

Dad used to call me ‘Daisy,’ on account of I was always in a daze and beautiful and delicate like a flower. That's what he said. He didn't mean it in a mean way. Dad was never nothing but kind and gentle with me. I guess he was so tough he didn't have to act like he was and didn't care one way or another if I was or not. Maybe it was because he'd already had two tough sons and wanted a girl anyway, or maybe he was just the sort of man who understood things for what they were. I was real lucky. Most guys like me -- boys who are kinda soft, who like poetry and art, who'd rather pick flowers than fights -- their dads don't understand. So even though I only got to have a dad for 13 years, I was lucky in that way.

No one else ever called me ‘Daisy,’ and I don't think I'd like it very much if they did. What people did call me was pansy, especially when I was younger. They did mean it in a mean way. I never talked to Dad about that. Even if he didn't care if I was tough or not, I kinda wanted him to think I was, you dig? But I'd talk to Mom, and she'd tell me that pansies were strong plants, strong enough to survive a deep frost in the dead of winter and still bloom. She was right; Mom knew just about everything about gardening. She could get anything to grow.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I've always been different. I can't remember exactly the first time I realized it. Maybe it was when I was seven and Mom took me and Two-Bit's little sister, Brenda -- Mom used to babysit her all the time -- to  _ Sleeping Beauty _ . That night Darry told me I couldn't talk about boys like I was talking about Prince Phillip. Or maybe it was when I was twelve and my notebooks became full of sketches of Rock Hudson and Marlon Brando. I don't know. There were a lot of things between the time I was born and the first time I fell in love that should have clued me in. But I always felt out of things. Maybe I knew all along but didn't want to.

* * *

You don't always know what's gonna mean something to you later when you go back to try to tell the story of your life, but sometimes - somehow - you do. I don't know the exact instance I knew what Mark would mean to me, but it wasn't long after we met.

Like most people, I didn't really know Mark. He was a greaser from our side of town, but we hadn't gone to the same junior high. And we weren't in any of the same classes, once we got to Will Rogers. He was part of some younger outfit. Even though most of them were probably older than me, I thought they were just rough boys who wanted to be JDs. So when he shouted, "Hey, Curtis!" Two days after I got back to school after that mess in September, I wasn't thrilled.

But I still turned. The halls were filled, but I'd been given a wide berth since I'd been back. Normally the halls were so crowded I'd have to shoulder my way through between bells. Now though, people made room.

Mark reached over to grab the railing at the top of the staircase. I crossed my arms over my chest. People were staring. "That's some tough shit about Cade and Winston." That was close to heartfelt condolences, between two hoods. "Cade was a good kid. We were in remedial English together."

"Yeah," I said.

He lifted his chin, and leveled me with an assessing squint. Mark was distinctive looking. I don't think anyone would've called him handsome exactly, but with his cat-like gold eyes and hair to match, he was striking. 

"See, Curtis, my brother's old lady says we should make friends with you. She read about y'all in the paper, and she's a sucker for orphans," - he flashed a grin at me. I had to look away; he was like the sun - "and it might be the death of me, but what can I say? I like living on the edge. So, I thought I'd come over and make friends."

I didn't have much to say to him then. So I left.

I didn't think too much about Mark for weeks. I was still kinda turned off then, but that would change soon enough.

* * *

It was the Saturday before Christmas break, I had turned in my theme to Mr. Syme. Letting all that out helped a little, but I still felt like I wasn't quite awake yet, plus I was worried about Mr. Syme reading it. Right after I handed in that stack of composition books, I was thinking writing about the zoo wouldn't have been so bad. Seeing all those caged animals was a personal experience. Why didn't I just write about that?

But things were getting a little closer to okay for a while. My grades picked up. I joined wrestling to get in shape before the track season started up. Also, Darry told me I had to do a winter sport. They were short on wrestlers in the lower weight classes, anyway.

The gymnasium smelled like stale sweat, when Soda came to watch the Saturday morning dual meet. Of course, Steve came too. I wished he hadn't. He spent the whole time looking up at the ceiling, bored. But Soda liked it. He told me he liked it a lot better than Cross-Country where they had to watch me run into the woods and wait for me to come back around.

I was good at wrestling. I could break out of almost any hold. Almost. I had yet to lose a match, and Soda was pretty proud, hollering like crazy. It turned out that growing up surrounded by greasers who at any moment might decide to jump out from behind the closet door to pin you was good training for folkstyle wrestling.

The last match (against a guy with big ears from Central) for me during the meet was the closest I got to losing. We had to go into a tiebreaker period. The other guy's dad was there and he was shouting orders my brain didn't have time to register but my opponent's body was snapping to meet the commands. He had me on the ground, with my left leg pinned under both his sweaty knees - which ain't painless, let me tell you - and my right leg pressed up between both our torsos. I struggled to keep my shoulders off the ground and get any leverage through my right leg. I twisted to try to get it around his shoulders. The thirty seconds was surely almost up. He slipped, for a second, and suddenly I was on top of him, sitting on his upper chest, my shins keeping his back flat on the mat. I leaned back, and he trapped my head between his thighs. If it weren't for the time limit, the other guy might have had me, but the escape I managed happened without a second to spare, so the ref lifted my arm as the victor.

Soda clapped obnoxiously loudly. I grinned at him. I love winning.

On my way over to Soda and Steve, I passed by the big-eared kid and his teammates. Somehow through the excitement of the gymnasium, one voice cut through. "How's it feel, Schmidt? You went up against a murderer and lived to tell the tale."

I kept walking. "I'll just grab my stuff from the locker room, Soda, and we can head out-"

Steve wheeled around. "What the fuck are you staring at, kid?"

I blinked at Steve's outburst, then noticed Mark Jennings there a little ways away, leaning against the gymnasium wall. Mark didn't seem to mind Steve's greeting. In a smooth motion he pushed himself off from the wall he was leaning against to approach us. "I had Saturday detention, but I walked by, and this seemed more interesting. You're a good fighter, Curtis."

"That's wrestling, not a fight."

"Tomato, tomahto. So, you going to Keller's party tonight?"

I was about to say no. I didn't even know who Keller was, but Soda slapped a hand on my shoulder and said, "Course he is!"

"Go out with your buddy. I'll tell Darry when he gets home." He nudged me and gave me an encouraging look. I didn't tell him Jennings was hardly my buddy. I think he knew anyway, but he'd been worried about me becoming a recluse. So sending me off with Mark Jennings seemed like a dandy idea, if it'd get me out. When I needed more prodding he said, "Relax and have fun, looks like your friend can teach you somethin' about that."

If only Soda had known the things I'd learn from him, he'd come to regret it.

* * *

Once when I was twelve, Gina Redman -- Evie’s kid sister -- and Donna Lewis invited me and Curly Shepard to Gina’s trailer to make-out. No one else was home and no one turned on the radio. I sipped a warm beer, while Gina drank three bottles in silence. She was thirteen, I think. She led me to the room she shared with Evie, where we stood about a foot apart, only connected at the mouth. Wondering why anyone would possibly like having an extra tongue flopping around theirs like a wet bass on the line, I waited for her to stop. Then she burped in my mouth and it tasted like bile, so I jerked back. We looked at each other, and then she reached for my zipper. I pushed her away. She started crying and asked if I thought she was pretty. I said yes, even though she wasn’t, especially with her smudged circle of eye makeup drooling down her cheeks. I left out her window to avoid Curly and Donna who were on the couch in the living room, but before I did I heard Curly ask Donna through the hollow bedroom door if he could suck on her toes. It was a weird day. Soda laughed when I told him about it.

Now I was fourteen, which made her fifteen, and she was the only person I knew at Keller’s party. Besides Mark, who had deserted me as soon as we arrived, like he hadn’t been the one to invite me. I think the kids there mostly went to Hale, like Gina. I didn’t really fit in here.

Someone kept playing the same Rolling Stones’ single over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, The Rolling Stones are tuff enough, but couldn’t they at least flip it over to the b-side, instead of just resetting the needle. I was about ready to lose it.

I sipped my beer. Gina was already so loaded, she kept touching me like girls do when they drink too much. She reached over and touched my hair, which was ungreased. No one used hair oil anymore. “You should come over and Evie will fix up your hair. She’s in beauty school.”

Gina’s hair was bleached now, frayed and fragile. If Evie had done that, I didn’t want her near mine. It was almost grown out anyway.

I tried to fade into the background, but she kept pulling me forward to introduce me to people who already knew who I was. It’s obvious when someone hears my name, and they don’t react or mishear it as Tony or something. Two-Bit said I was Tulsa Famous. There wasn’t anyone in Tulsa who didn’t know about my family and what had happened in the fall. That was uncomfortable, having people know the worst things that had ever happened to you. To be defined by it. Maybe we’re all just collections of our own tragedies, but that didn’t mean I wanted people to know mine. Some things are private, or at least they should be.

I made up my mind to beat it out of there, but I froze in the doorway of the kitchen. Mark was sitting at the table with four other guys playing poker, coins piled at the center of the table.

Mark’s face lit up when he saw me, which made the whole kitchen brighter, and offered a commanding reprieve. “Williamson, move. Curtis is sitting there.”

And just like that Williamson rose, and I took the seat next to Mark. Someone dealt me a hand.

He leaned over to my ear, like we already had a secret. “See,” -- his voice was soft, his breath warm -- “I can make people do whatever I want.”

I could barely hear his words. I could not tell you if they were a secret, a promise, or a warning. 

There was no going back, after that.


	2. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

I never had a buddy like Mark before, or honestly many buddies that were truly my own. Even Johnny had been Soda’s friend first, having been the same age and all. Mark though, he was mine. And I was his. That happens when you’re young; someone you never thought much of can weave their way into the fabric of your life in a way that makes it see like they were always woven there. Or maybe I just wanted someone to be near and there he was. Everywhere.

So much so I wasn’t exactly surprised when he pulled up beside me when I was walking home from school on a Friday. We’d been buddying around most Fridays. He was in a bright red Plymouth Fury , a car any hood should know was too flashy to steal. Of course, Mark wasn’t just any hood. 

“Get in. I got you a Snickers.” He waved it around.

He had gotten it for me special. I knew Mark didn’t like candy or anything too sweet. I got to know a lot about Mark in the past few weeks. 

“Curtis. Pony.  _ Ponyboy _ ,” he whined. “Get in the car. Have some candy.”

I did. It was a tuff car. Boy, Steve would be jealous.

Mark grinned, as he tossed me the Snickers. “Tried-and-true. Nine out of ten perverts agree it’s their preferred method for luring boys into their vehicles.” He pulled away from the curb. “Where were you? I thought practice was over at five?”

It flattered me that he knew my schedule. “I had to talk to my English teacher.”

“You could’ve told me. Bryon’s off tryin’ to get up some chick’s skirt. I’m so bored.” Douglas was always trying to get up some girl’s skirt.

“Where are we going?” I asked as I started eating the candy, mostly to have something to do. Sometimes being with Mark confused my hands, and they forgot how to act like hands. 

“How ‘bout we go to the expressway and drag?”

“In this? No way.”

“Chicken shit.”

“I ain’t chicken. I can’t go and get in more trouble with the fuzz. Darry’ll kill me before the state gets a chance to throw me in a boys’ home. Don’t you worry about that stuff?” 

But I knew the answer. Mark didn’t worry about anything. Even though he was an orphan, too -- the only other kid I knew who’d lost both parents. Mark’s parents killed each other in front of him when he was in elementary school. It was a sad story, but the East Side was full of sad stories. As bad as it is, you kinda get numb to it. You have to. He lived with his friend.

“Curtis, they ain’t gonna take us away from nobody. Then they’d have to deal with us. And would it really be so bad, if we get stuck in a boys’ home together? Maybe we can share bunkbeds. I always wanted bunkbeds. I call top bunk.”

I just looked at him. 

“Okay,” he went on. “We can share the top. Keep warm, that way.” I could feel my ears heat up. Mark made a lot of funny jokes like that. Jokes that made me feel funny.

“I’ve had enough trouble for a lifetime, Mark.”

“Then you shouldn’t have gotten into a car with me, huh? Stolen car, drugs --”

“What drugs?” I asked, alarmed.

“There’s a couple of doobies in the glove box. Came with the car. Don’t look at me like that, Curtis. Fine, we won’t drag.”

We drove around for a while, up around First Street where there were a bunch of seedy bars.

“Was it Big Shane who taught you to fight? I remember he was a hell of a brawler.” That caught me off guard. I think Mark lived to catch me off-guard, thinking back.

I shrugged, hoping he wasn’t fixing to jump someone.

When I didn’t say anything he tilted his head back and said, “Big Shane,” with reverence. 

Everyone on our side of the Union Depot called Dad ‘Big Shane,’ except for Mom who had called him ‘Tiny.’ No one around here could ever pronounce ‘Shaynne’ quite right. He liked a fight as much as my brothers, maybe even more. 

“Beat my old man up one time. I was in the car outside the Wild Coyote, waiting to drive him home.”

“Sorry.” I tried to think of something to say to change the subject, but couldn’t come up with anything quick enough.

“I’m sure he had it comin’. He was a mean bastard, my old man,” Mark carried on jovially. I looked out the window. “Think he made a pass at a barmaid, and you know, Big Shane held court on the East Side, everyone came out to watch, but I saw from the car. He beat him to a pulp.” Then Mark kinda  _ laughed _ . “A real savage, Big Shane.”

“I don’t like fights,” I heard myself say. I rubbed nougat and caramel off my incisors with my tongue and kept chewing.

“What? Are you gonna tell me you're into that hippie shit?” 

I shook my head as I swallowed. I was shrouded in too much melancholy for that. “I just don’t like them.” 

“You know, you’re a funny guy, Curtis. Can’t say I ever met anyone like you. Is it funny being you?”

I shrugged. I’d never been anyone else.

It would have bothered me coming from anyone but Mark. I knew he didn’t mean nothing by it. He genuinely wanted to know. I could really talk to him. Mark could get you to open up, share things you’d never thought you’d share. He had a bravado like a lot of greasers, but he wasn’t the sort to judge. He didn’t dig -- we saw things differently. But he was interested in the way I saw things. Insatiably curious, I guess you could call him, as an ill-fated cat. I’m kinda curious too, which may be why we got along so well so fast. We had a lot in common.

It was a shame no one ever taught him to read.

“You miss your parents still?” I asked.

I got lost one time when I was little, at a fair in Anadarko. I guess I wandered off. I didn’t mean to. One minute I was walking alongside the rest of my family, then looked up to see I must have taken a different turn and was alone crushed in a crowd. I must have been pretty young, because in my memory I was eye level with all the grownups’ belts. I frantically searched around the fair for what seemed like hours, panicked but too shy to ask a stranger. I was bawling, sure I would be lost there forever and I would never go home or see my family again. I don’t remember how I got found, but I must have been. 

I kinda felt like that since Mom and Dad died, if you want to know the truth. All the time in some small, but feral, place inside my chest. When would I shake that feeling?

“Never paid it much mind, myself,” he replied nonchalantly.

I digested that. I wondered what it was like to be untouchable like Mark. Sometimes he seemed unreal -- ethereal, maybe -- like he was transplanted from some other planet where desperation hadn’t been invented.

He wasn’t hard like Dally had been. He wasn’t angry at the world, or dejected, or even disillusioned. It was like he was completely immune to life, which had given him lemons that he chucked over a chain link fence for kicks. I envied him.

He made a hard left, sending me against the passenger door. “Let’s go climb the water tower.”

So we went to the water tower, because Mark wanted to, and I wanted to do what he wanted. We passed by a couple of Tim Shepard’s guys, which I should have expected as the water tower wasn’t far from their alleys. They did a double take at Mark and me in this tuff car and started laughing. I slunked down in the seat. I hoped it didn’t get back to Darry.

“Maybe if we leave the car here, they’ll take it off our hands.”

I hopped out. “Race you!”

I had a head start and was faster than Mark, so he was still behind me when I skidded to a halt by the railroad tracks. Near one of the rusted ties, a purple-blue crocus was in bloom. Juxtaposition, that’s what it’s called. 

I crouched down to get a closer look.

I hadn’t heard Mark catch up, but his foot came down and scraped the lonely flower back across the cracked soil it had dared to breach. 

I looked up at him. “Why did you have to go and do that? It was nice.”

“You ever see something so perfect and you just want to ruin it?”

I didn’t dig that at all, but I decided it was more important to show Mark how good I was at climbing a water tower than to argue about flowers. 

I jumped up to finish our race, doing a handspring on my way. It was also important that Mark see I could do a handspring.

See, I liked Mark so much I could overlook the needless destruction, the fact that he maybe liked me because I’d been in so much trouble, his off handed comments about my family, and that he had some wild ideas about cowboys and Indians.

I made it under the tower first. Only the first ten feet or so of the water tower took much effort, then there was a ladder leading to the top. Each rung stained our palms with rust.

When we got up there, I was taken back by the size of the tank. It was huge. I wiped off my hands on my pants.

“Hey, look at this! Everything’s so tiny.” He leaned over the railing.

I looked down at the ground beneath us. You couldn’t make out anything that well. Not the crossties of the tracks, much less that abused crocus, but further out you could see our city. The water tower was not far from downtown, so we looked over Tulsa at all the buildings and houses. And I thought about going for Sunday drives with Mom and Dad, and how Mom would say that in each house we drove by there was a family just as important as us, living lives as complicated.

I felt small.

Mark whooped. “It’s like we’re kings,” he said.

I had an odd thought that someday this would not be my city. I couldn’t wait, but missed it already. (Can you be wistful and nostalgic all at once?) I wondered where Mark would be in two years, after we were done with high school. I didn’t ask him, though. I knew he didn’t think about the future.

I heard a rumble, but couldn’t spot the train.

Mark had turned around to examine the graffitti -- if you could call it that -- on the tank. It was a smattering of initials and declarations of things like  _ ‘David was HERE!’ _ We were far from the first people to climb up here.

“You think R.S. and S.V. are still together?” I asked, looking at the lopsided heart that held those letters.

He didn’t answer. “Do you have any paint? We should write our names on here.”

“I don’t carry paint around with me.”

“Well you should, you could paint something real big up here and everyone would see it.”

“What would I paint?” I ask, as we circled the tank. I tapped it, to see what sound it would make.

“You could paint me. My face grinning over Tulsa.” He demonstrated. His lips were chapped.

This moment was good. Mark already looked like a painting of himself, golden against the greenish-gray sky. Golden eyelashes. Golden freckles. Golden grin. Golden everything. Even the hair in his armpits, golden, when he stretched his arms above his head and his t-shirt sleeves fell, hem rising to expose another sliver of gold. It was February, you’d think he’d be freezing, but as with everything else, temperature didn’t seem to affect him.

The air was still. I had goosebumps under my sweatshirt. I should have worn a coat.

The best we could do was to use a blade to etch our initials into the peeling paint on the railing. We sat down on the grated floor. Half facing-Tulsa and half-facing each other, each with a leg dangling off the platform. It was exhausting to climb up all that way, which I hadn’t really noticed. We were so close. My arms and legs were heavy, but my head was light.

I would draw Mark tonight, I decided. I would not draw his eyelashes or his freckles. I’d draw him small and far away legs bent as they were bent, but not touching mine. I’d draw him separate, or maybe we were so intertwined I had disappeared from the frame. I wanted to capture him as I saw him. Taut, a perpetually coiled spring. One ankle exposed under his rucked up pantleg. He wasn’t wearing socks. I liked his ankle. I thought it was the best ankle I'd ever seen. 

I had given up trying to match his hair color with my paints weeks ago. Some things can’t be recreated, or saved.

“You know,” he sounded like he was really thinking about what he was gonna say, a rare thing for him, “you’re as pretty as any chick I know.”

_ Pretty _ . That should have bothered me. I don’t look too tough naturally. It’s kinda a sore spot for me, if I’m being honest. I’m kinda soft spoken and I keep my fingernails clean and neat. That sort of thing can mark you when you’re a guy, especially in my neighborhood. 

But then, in that moment with Mark’s knee pressing against my thigh, I didn’t mind being called pretty. The idea that Mark might think me so sent a thrill through me. And the way he said it -- it meant that when we saw a girl walking down the street and he turned to look back at her, he might just as soon look at me like that. I wanted nothing more than for him to look at me like that.

I couldn’t stand for him to see me, so I leaned back down on the grate and looked up at the sky, which was real cloudy. Had I ever been closer to heaven? 

I wasn’t completely sure what heart palpitations were, but I thought I might be having them right then.

Pulling up my legs, because I felt I might slip out through the railing and plummet to my death, I put the soles of my worn tennis shoes on the bar. He mimicked me. 

I didn’t remember the sun setting but it was dark when Mark brought himself up on his elbow and turned to look down at me. Through his t-shirt I could see his chest expanding and contracting in the rhythm of his breathing. 

I was terrified. 

Lightening fractured the sky above his head. Instinctively I counted for the thunder:  _ one mississippi .. two mississippi ... three -- _

“Are we expectin’ twisters?” I asked in sudden realization. Green sky, lightning, no rain … We both grew up in the heartland; we should have known better. 

“Well, shit.” He dropped his head and started laughing, which filled me with a bubbling joy, like I was the one laughing. So I did.

“We should probably get down from here.”

“Knew you was chicken.”

“I ain’t itchin’ to be swept up by a tornado.” -- the thunder clapped -- “Or electrocuted.” 

He jumped up and extended his hand down to me. I took it and let him pull me up.

I stood next to him, looking out from that manmade precipice one last time before we climbed down.

If Mark wanted, we hunted for action, but evenings like this, just the two of us were my favorite.

We walked back to the car, which had not been taken off our hands after all. 

He fiddled under the steering wheel to get the car going again, before we drove away. I had no idea how late it was. I turned on the radio to a Beatles song. When I went to change the station Mark’s hand stilled mine. 

“No. I kinda like this one.” That was a thing about Mark. He liked what he liked when he liked it. It didn’t matter if he was supposed to or not.

His hand on my wrist, we let the car fill with layered percussion. It spoke to me. Maybe because Mark liked it, or maybe because there was something wrong with me. You know there is, when you start digging the Beatles.

When the song ended, Mark moved his hand. I remember how he raked his eyes over me, leaving me raw and exposed. 

“We can go drag, if you still want,” I said.

I’d catch hell from Darry, but that didn’t seem to matter anymore than the imminent tornado. I didn’t want to say goodbye yet.

* * *

We were going about 90, when I saw a police car lying in wait. It didn’t even take a second for the siren to start wailing and the cruiser to pull out behind us. 

_ Glory _ , I thought,  _ we’re in for it now _ . Red lights flashed against the car’s mirrors. 

But Mark wasn’t slowing down. Mark hit the gas. 

“Are you crazy?” I shouted over the roar of the engine. We’d never be able to outrun the fuzz. He’d just make it worse for us.

“Guess I am!” 

I grabbed onto the console with sweaty hands, as we weaved through cars that were all trying to pull to the right.

I no longer feared being caught. I was afraid we’d crash and die. My eyes were so wide they felt dry.

Mark made a sharp turn onto one of the wooded dirt roads that led to the lake. The cop zipped passed.

We pulled off to the side. It was dark. Mark had turned off the headlights.

“That was close,” he said, unconcerned. “We’ll have to ditch the car and make it back to town on foot.”

I opened the door and nearly fell out. We set off to the trees, but didn’t get far before I stumbled. I got sick. 

After I was done, I kept my head down for a minute between my knees, trying to collect myself, spitting out residual vomit.

I stilled when I felt Mark touch the back of my head and card his fingers through my hair. It was odd, but I didn’t say anything, because I liked it. I liked it a lot. 

I sat up, wiped my mouth, and looked at him. He looked back.

His fingers tightened in my hair, it pulled at my scalp in a way that felt very good. He didn’t say anything, but his face darted at mine, so swiftly our teeth clinked together like drinking glasses. It echoed through my entirety. Not just my body, everything.

I had no time to panic. Red lit up the forest. I guess the cop had turned back. 

“Just run. I’ll handle this.”

So I ran. 

It wasn’t until I got home that I realized Mark had slipped two joints in my sweatshirt pocket, but I had other things to worry about. 

Mark had kissed me.


	3. Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

When I woke up the next morning, I had nearly convinced myself I had dreamed everything: the water tower, the car chase, and even Mark himself. He was an imaginary friend - the Harvey to my Elwood. If he seemed unreal, it was because he was. He was a product of my wild imagination and watching every James Dean movie. I never did anything after wrestling practice but read and watched TV alone _._ No one ever touched my hair, and I never wanted anyone to. And no boy would ever kiss me. That's how it was and that's how I wanted it to be. Trouble is, the truth always finds a way out.

I forgot that Darry had to work second shift, which was my saving grace for I got home at around midnight but still managed to be in bed when he came home, checked my room and flipping on the light, which might have woken me up had I really been asleep. And that's why we were eating breakfast calmly that Saturday, and Darry was reading yesterday's _Tulsa World_ and not hollering at me.

I tried to read an upside down article on the back of Darry's folded paper about the most recent local boys who'd been killed in combat.

Soda and Steve were already horsing around the living room, where Steve had apparently slept last night. They must have come in late, but Darry didn't care much if Soda stayed out all night.

Soda had Steve in a headlock, but instead of shouting 'uncle,' Steve shouted at me, "Hey, I heard Jennings got picked up for joyriding last night."

Of course, he had to bring up Mark and shattered my delusion.

He broke free, then made a leap towards Soda, who raced into the kitchen and behind Darry, putting both hands on his shoulders to use him as a human shield.

"Really? What happened?" I feigned ignorance and mild interest.

Steve reiterated a version of last night that was inaccurate, but thankfully made no mention of an accomplice who had punked-out and left Mark to be arrested.

"What happened to him?"

"How should I know? He was stupid and got caught, and he'll pay the cost."

Darry barely lowered his paper to glare at me. "You don't go getting caught doin' nothing like that with him."

"Aw Darry, people borrow cars to drag all the time," Soda said, as he pivoted behind him.

"Not you." Dary pointed his finger at me, which was not allowed in our house. We don't point fingers at each other, at least not literally.

"I haven't even done nothing." It offended me that he didn't trust me, even though I had been in a stolen car last night being chased up Interstate 44 by the police. He didn't know that. Despite obviously having terrible judgement, I still thought Darry should think me better than that.

"Darry's right. You ought to stay away from that kid. He's trouble," Steve said, as though it was his place to weigh in.

I thought this was real hypocritical coming from him, because he had taken me to the junkyard before to fence lifted hubcaps.

Steve kept his eyes on Soda, planning his next strike. "There's something wrong with him - in the eyes. Gives me the creeps." He was the only person in the world who didn't like Mark.

' _Something wrong with him_.' That was one way to say it.

I thought the question that I tried to ignore: Was Mark a queer? Maybe that was what Steve saw in him. There was a lot not to like about Steve, but he was perceptive.

When I pictured a homosexual, I saw middle-aged man with a funny little mustache and dark glasses, hanging around parks. Not someone so vibrantly flawless as Mark.

I started to feel nervous. Mark had kissed me and he was probably in jail and I couldn't really forget any of it, but I tried to push it back a little while longer until after everyone left for work.

"Do you believe in God?" I asked.

Everyone kinda stopped. I guess it was a funny thing to ask like that. Even though I was looking at the crumbs of cake on my plate, I knew Darry and Sodapop were looking at each other.

"'Course," Soda said simply.

"And heaven and hell?"

"Shit," Steve jumped in, "we're already in hell."

"Darry?" I looked up at him. I wanted to know how he felt about it, but I couldn't read his face.

"You don't do nothin' bad, you don't have to worry about it."

It wasn't fair if some people had to rot in Hell for stealing and jumping people and sinning, when they probably wouldn't have done those things if they came from good homes or if bad things hadn't happened to them. If lives are just a big test, is it fair that some people had harder ones than others?

Darry got up from the table to get ready. Soda slid into his seat.

"We can go to church tomorrow, just you and me, if you want."

I thought vaguely of Cherry's words: _'l couldn't ever look at the person who killed him.'_

I shook my head 'no.'

I read through the paper as they all made a mad dash outside. No tornado hit Tulsa, if you were curious. Not that night, at least.

* * *

I chain-smoked all morning.

There were four books in the house that mentioned homosexuality: the H encyclopedia, _The Carpetbaggers_ , a parenting book, and our Bible. I knew this because I had read everything in the house.

In _The Carpetbaggers_ , there's a guy Claude. He realized he was a homosexual, because he was so aroused by the boy in the yellow jacket and "all the indignities the young man had subjected him to" before robbing him. Then he killed himself by cutting off his dick while he cursed his mother. The thought that Darry had read this made me want to crawl in some hole somewhere.

I didn't think Mark was like Claude, but maybe he was like the boy. I wasn't sure. I reread the part over and over again, until the ashes fell off my cigarette and singed the page. Not wanting to have anyone to think I was reading that scene, I threw away the entire book in the garbage, ripped and crumpled the pages, buried them beneath some of the trash and dumped the coffee grounds from the percolator on top, then all the ashtrays.

I doubted Darry would miss it.

I could not find the H encyclopedia anywhere, but our encyclopedias were old and probably outdated, anyway. Mom had bought them at a yard sale. She never fell for door-to-door salesmen's pitches. I did find her parenting book, though.

Mom tried really hard at everything she did, even if it came easy to her. She read those books, even though she was a great mother naturally, like she used recipes even though she was a great cook and wouldn't have needed to.

I had read this book a few years ago, and I knew, even at eleven, that I had to keep my face blank. There was no reason this would bother me, because it had nothing to do with me. I read the pages that would always stick with me, the gist if not verbatim: _(1)_

_16\. What is self-abuse? This is usually called masturbation. It is an attempt to secure sexual stimulation by some artificial means. Sometimes boys get into bad sex habits during their early teens. This should be avoided. Every boy should know that masturbation may be the first step toward homosexuality._

I wondered how much Mark jerked off. I knew he would tell me if I asked, in the same easy way he talked about everything. I worried I was doing it too much, but didn't think it was more than any other guy. Had I been doing it more lately? I'd just had a lot of pent up something. I couldn't help it. But I didn't see how it would be a gateway to anything more criminal. It wasn't like doing it made me think about other boys. I didn't think about anything, really, just how it felt. I decided right then to stop, just to be safe.

_17\. What is a homosexual? This is a person who tries to get sexual satisfaction from someone of the same sex. Of course, this is unnatural and all kinds of problems can arise from it. Frequently it starts out with masturbation, and then the individual seeks a partner for mutual sex play. These practices are destructive to the personality, and frequently this type of individual disintegrates to the point where he becomes involved in various types of sex crimes. In fact, the moral degenerate is responsible for some of the most vicious and sadistic sex crimes on record._

Though he was my buddy, I knew he didn't have much in the way of a moral compass. Was this all just another example of Mark's disregard for rules and social norms? He broke all kinds of laws, why should this be any different? Was that what Mark was doing with me, ' _seeking a partner for mutual sex play'_? The thought did something to my stomach. I lit another weed - my last one - with a trembling hand and kept reading.

_18\. Aren't some people born homosexuals? This is so rare that whenever a case occurs it is considered a medical phenomenon. In practically all cases, homosexuality is cultivated. Individuals who get into abnormal sex habits during early youth can develop them into such a fixed pattern that they soon think these deviations are perfectly normal. When homosexuals are arrested, they try to excuse their conduct by saying, "I guess I'm just made this way."_

I put the book back where I found it. When Mom used recipes, she'd make her own variations and corrections, leaving little neat notes in the margins. She didn't write in books. I wished she had.

I didn't need to check our Bible. I knew what it said.

I finished my cigarette and considered smoking one of the joints, but I didn't want to do it alone. It was really more of a thing I would do with Mark. He didn't like grass too much though. He said it made him sleepy.

I wondered if Mark was still jailed. I hoped he was okay. I wondered if he was sweating the kiss. Was he worried about my reaction, that I might tell someone? Was he planning on trying it again? Or maybe in all the excitement of being arrested, it was the last thing on his mind.

Maybe they'd lock him up for good and I wouldn't have to worry about any of this. I was scared they would.

I wanted to talk to him. I called his house, but I didn't know who answered because I hung up as soon as the dial tone cut off. Twice.

We didn't have any books in the house that could satisfy the questions I couldn't bring myself to ask.

* * *

I hadn't been to the new library downtown since it was built. It was a big deal. It was kinda a tourist attraction. It was supposed to be a center of community education and usher the city into the future. They'd been planning it for years, and it had cost the city a lot of money. I was ten when they voted on it. Mom had been excited. She didn't like reading stories, like I did. What she liked was non-fiction - biographies and how-to books. She loved to learn and could do just about anything on her own, if she had a book to teach her. She was maybe the smartest person I'd ever known.

It seemed absurd that she would never get to see it.

The Central Library was sleek and modern, contrasted against the art deco architecture of the other buildings surrounding it. Glory, but it seemed like the Parthenon to me.

Inside was airy and pristine, with more books out in the open then I had ever seen in my life. At the Carnegie Library, you looked through the card catalogue to find a book, took the card to a librarian and she got it for you. Now, you could browse, which I was grateful for.

Social Science books are in the 300s. I knew the Dewey Decimal System better than I knew the Scripture. There were quite a few people in the library, but most everyone was mulling around minding their own business. I couldn't help glancing around, as I searched for any book that mentioned things like "pathology" or "sex" and even a couple that boldly titled with the word "homosexual." Book after book, I sat on the ground hunched over, sheltered between isles, and looked through their table of contents. I read until my eyes burned, my mouth dried, and my mind swam with fragments:

… _An important cause of homosexuality is isolation from the opposite sex. (2)_ … _When cases of homosexuality are brought to the attention of the psychiatrist during adolescence, the possibility of an ultimate adjustment to normal heterosexual life is always present, except in the cases with a very obvious constitutional or endocrine basis for their anomaly. (3) … They do not deserve contempt. Pity, sympathy, and understanding would constitute a far prescription … And, to see just how the Pretty Boy is led into homosexual paths_ … _(4)_

My head was congested with new information.

Normal people were called "heterosexual," which was a word I'd never heard of. People don't have to talk about what they are, if they're normal. There were a lot of different things to call queers, though. These books didn't use words like queer or faggot or pansy. I guess because they're impolite. They used words like _Homosexual, Invert, Homophile, Pervert, Deviant, Sex Criminal._ I even read the word _Gay_ used to mean homosexual in an interview with a queer. That gave me a big laugh. There was nothing gay about being a queer.

It was an interesting book though, where the therapist guy interviewed a bunch of homosexuals. That was interesting, to get into someone's depraved head. I skimmed through the book and tried to see if Mark was like these men. I read:

_MORSE: How did you feel towards girls?_

_LEE: I'm not sure, exactly. I didn't dislike them or anything. I was shy. I think I may have been a little bit afraid of them. (4)_

Mark wasn't shy around girls or scared of them.

I read about different guy, and about how he became a homosexual because he was bad at being a boy: ' _A boy did not sit around and read books, did not draw pictures, and took a very minuscule interest in his school work.'_ _(4)_

This didn't describe Mark at all. He didn't have any trouble fitting in. He was rough and rambunctious, everything a guy ought to be.

One guy though - a bisexual, someone who was normal and abnormal, and could progress to being an "all-the-way fairy," as one guy called it - sounded like Mark: _'You know what a kick is? A kick is like a thing that reminds you that you're alive and swinging. When there's no kicks, then you know you're dead.' (4)_

Was it just a kick for him? Was he just trying to cure his perpetual boredom? I kept searching for answers.

I held my breath when I came across what homosexuals did together. No lurid descriptions, just clinical language: … _fellatio ... mutual masturbation ... active anal intercourse … passive anal intercourse ..._

"Ponyboy!"

I snapped the book shut, but could not remove it from my lap. My jeans were tight. "Miss Doris - hi."

It would have been a nice time for one of the book shelves to fall down and kill me. My face burned.

I glanced at my lap. At least the book was face-down. There were so many books here, surely she wouldn't recognize this one's back cover.

"It's so good to see you. It's been so long."

I should have stood, so she could have said something about my height, then ask about school, you know those types of questions grownups ask kids when they don't know them too well. But I pulled my knees toward me and looked up at her.

"You work here now?" I already knew the answer.

Miss Doris was a librarian and Mom's friend. They'd chat while I picked out books, but they were more than a librarian and library-enthusiast. They drank tea together and Mom divided her hostas and brought them for Miss Doris to propagate in her own yard. It was a beautiful way to have a friend. I thought Miss Doris was a little younger than Mom, but maybe she just seemed that way because she didn't have kids.

"I do." She was lovely, with her floral-print dresses and kind hazel eyes. "When you're ready you can come to the front desk and I'll get you set with a library card."

"Thanks."

Mercifully, she left.

I had to wait a while before I could get up to leave. I picked the two least incriminating books I'd been reading, and four more books at random from one of the kiosk displays.

I felt so strange after reading all that, not even that the lure of thousands of books was strong enough to keep me in the library. I wasn't in the mood to explore.

I went to Miss Doris to check out. She filled out a library card for me and started removing the borrowing cards and stamping the pockets in the back of each book. We made small talk, which I've never been good at. I felt awkward. She looked sad.

I guessed she missed Mom, too. I wondered if when she looked at me she saw my face wanted in the newspaper or the boy who licked stamps for all the envelopes stuffed with letters about the voting for the library. I don't know why I liked to do that so much. They tasted awful, but I was eight, and when you're eight stuff like that is fun. I hoped that was what she saw. It didn't make me feel too hot, having Mom's friend think I was a juvenile delinquent now.

She paused as she got to the books about mental disorders.

"It's for a school assignment - I'm writing about Boo Radley for English." I thought this was a good lie.

"For Mr. Syme?" That startled me. It must have shown on my face, because she clarified. "Peter's a good friend of mine. Us reader-types have to stick together, I think. He says you're very talented."

Mr. Syme liked my theme. He said it was the best piece of writing he ever got from a student. He said it could be published. He said he was getting a new typewriter, and I could have his old one. He had told Miss Doris I was talented.

I could hardly picture him out of school, much less being friends with Miss Doris. I wondered if they were dating. They were about the same age. I hoped she wouldn't mention this to Mr. Syme.

After she stacked the books in front of me, she said, "We could always use another library clerk, if you're ever looking for an after school job or anything. I could put in a good word for you."

"I'd have to ask Darry."

"Of course."

"Thanks, miss." I turned to leave.

I walked home feeling like I was an actor and my life was a movie and everyone was working off the same script but me. I just stood there scene to scene, not knowing my lines, rapidly losing the plot.

I knew I was made wrong from a young age. My parents never made me feel bad about it, but when you're cut from a different piece of cloth than anyone else you know, it's hard not to notice.

The truth is, I was afraid I was becoming a homosexual. I didn't have an earth shattering revelation. I knew I was susceptible to homosexuality like I knew my middle name. I wasn't like Darry or Soda or Two-Bit or Curly Shepard or the guys who drank beer and belched and sat around bragging about the things they did to girls. I had no desire to do anything with a girl. There was something missing in me. I found it last year in Algebra, looking at the back of Dennis Samuels's neck. I found it in Stanley Kowalski in _A Streetcar Named Desire_. I found it in Mark Jennings's dangerous grin.

Mark had picked up on something that was in me long before I met him. The way a ham radio receives a signal. I must have been emitting a frequency. He would have never sought me out, or kissed me, if I hadn't.

I thought about him a lot - in bed and in the shower. It frightened me, but I couldn't stop.

I was in third grade when I found out about sex - you know, normal sex. I think it was about twenty minutes after Soda had learned about sex. _'Wanna hear something gross?'_ he had asked, then proceeded to tell me something I can't quite recall. Then he finished it off with, _'And we know he did it to Mom at least three times.'_

Soda had been my primary source of sexual education ever since. But I couldn't ask him about any of this. This was one thing not even Soda could understand.

I had to talk to Mark, because he was the only other boy I knew who I thought might feel this way. Next time he found me, I would confront him and convince him that we could not be queer.

* * *

Only Mark didn't come find me. I was left wondering why. It'd been nearly a week. Since we became friends, we'd never gone so long without seeing each other.

I knew he was out of jail. Terry Jones had told me. They had talked since that night, even though Mark thought Jones more a lackey than a buddy.

I worried Mark was mad that I ran. Maybe he was bored of me. He had a lot of friends. He could hang out with anyone. Or maybe he wasn't a homosexual after all. Maybe had kissed me, tasted the vomit on my lips, and decided it wasn't for him. I didn't care if he was repulsed by kissing me. He should be. Maybe he was kissing somebody else by now. Good for him.

I went to go find him. I don't know why.

Mark lived in a slightly better neighborhood than mine, in a slightly worse house. It looked so strange and small as I approached. It was framed in the shadows of two regular sized houses. I wondered why it was built there. We weren't so friendly that I could go in without knocking. I felt stupid, waiting there on the porch for someone to answer.

It was Douglas's mom who did answer. She was very large and very kind. Her foot was all bandaged up and she used a walker. They'd amputated some of her toes. She had diabetes.

"Oh, Ponyboy! Mark's told me so much about you. You're even more handsome in person."

"Thanks." - My stomach did a happy flip. Mark had been talking about me. - "Is Mark around?"

He showed up behind her, before she could respond.

"Hi," I said.

He smiled - not grinned, smiled - like he was happy to see me.

I was gonna suggest we take a walk or something, but he spoke first.

"Mom," - He only ever called her that if she was around. - "We're gonna go play in my room." Like we were little kids.

He shared a room with Bryon. It was small and musty, with two parallel twin beds, covered in with dingy sheets. There was a copy _The Sun Also Rises_. I never thought of Douglas as a reader.

"That's Bryon's bed," he said like it was necessary. "You two have a lot in common. He's going with the Shepard girl now."

I didn't know what to do, so I picked up the book and sat down on the side of the bed, facing Mark's. I'd read this book before. I thought Hemingway was overrated. His prose was okay, but I could tell he was an asshole as a person. I just could.

Mark sat down, mirroring me on his own bed. There was only a yard between us. If I stretched out my legs a little, they would touch his.

"You in big trouble 'bout the Fury?" I asked.

"I have to pick up some trash and then do some probation. No sweat." He was still smiling.

"I haven't seen you in a while."

"I knew you'd turn up. You worried about me?"

"Why'd you do it?"

"You said you wanted to drag."

"That's not what I'm talking about." He knew what I was talking about.

He glanced at the closed door. I could hear the TV from the living room. I wanted a cigarette.

"Guess I just wanted to. I was thinking about it on the water tower, but I didn't want you to freak and jump off it."

"But why?"

He shrugged. "I just look at you and want to kiss you and stuff. Simple as that. Don't be bugged."

_And stuff._

I needed to leave.

Mark leaned forward and put his hands on my knees, gold eyes steady and challenging. I sucked in a trembling breath.

If you ever wondered how an antelope feels before it gets eaten by a lion, I think I could tell you.

"I can't." It came out a weedy whisper. The air had gotten denser, and with each inhale, my lungs grew heavier and heavier.

"Curtis," He moved one palm to my face, as light as his voice. "I ain't gonna tell nobody and you ain't gonna tell nobody. It don't matter then, like a tree fallin' in the forest without nobody to hear it."

I don't know if it was the argument or his confident, relaxed tone that won me over, but I suddenly couldn't think of a reason why I wouldn't want to kiss Mark Jennings.

He leaned in, his face seemingly bigger in the foreground, the background completely obscured and irrelevant. There wasn't room for it or objections as Mark kissed me. He took up every bit of me.

For the first time, I wanted to kiss someone back. My hands were tentative, as I reached for him. His were not.

I had one hand on the back of his neck, fingertips sneaking down his collar. The tag of his t-shirt brushed against my knuckles.

His hands were everywhere.

There was licking and touching and sucking and biting and spit - so much spit but I didn't care. Didn't care about anything but Mark's mouth and the fine hairs on the base of his skull, and his hand on my stomach.

Soon, as he pressed closer, I tried to hide how much I liked it with my forearm, awkwardly bent between us covering my crotch. But after a few minutes Mark decided I would have no secrets from him, and moved my arm to the side and held it there. He leaned forward, so I leaned back on the bed. He rocked against me, and I could feel that he wanted just as bad as I wanted.

It was so electric, I thought I might die.

* * *

 _(1) So You Want to Raise a Boy?_ by W. Cleon Skousen (1958), pp. 260-261

 _(2) Sex Perversions and Sex Crimes_ by James Melvin Reinhardt (1957), p.47

 _(3) Clinical Psychiatry_ by W. Mayer-Gross, Eliot Slater, & Martin Roth (1960), p. 190

 _(4) The Homosexual; a Frank Study of Abnormal Sex Life Among Males_ by Bangamin Morse (1962), pp. 9, 39-40, 50-51


	4. Chapter Four

See end of chapter for content warning.

* * *

**Chapter Four**

There were two weeks between the end of wrestling and the beginning of track, which meant most days I had about four hours of time after school when I was alone. Well, not really alone. I started walking home with Mark every day after school.

The lock on my bedroom door never worked, and the door itself didn't always latch. When Soda and me were little and wanted to be sneaky, we took to wedging the wooden chair by our desk under the doorknob to keep it shut. We'd done it so much the top of the chair was rubbed bare. Now I was with Mark, with the door propped shut and blinds lowered. Sunlight seeped in through the slats. I watched our shadows merge on the wall, with my Geometry book digging into my side until Mark tossed it off the bed.

If we were a boy and a girl, we probably would have gone out with a group, at least at first. We'd hold hands at the Dingo and kiss at the movies. Maybe we'd even drive to the park after and make-out. If a cop came by and knocked on the window, he'd just tell us to keep it moving.

It wasn't like that for me and Mark. When we were together, we had to be cautious - this did not come natural to Mark, let me tell you. Completely removed from the outside world as we were, things were happening really fast. I knew from a film they made us watch in Gym, that it was the girl's responsibility to keep things from going too far, and a boy should be a gentleman and respect that. There was no girl in my bedroom to slow things down, and I wouldn't call Mark or either myself a gentleman.

The film in Gym was corny but it right about a lot of things. Kissing had led to necking, which in turn led to heavy petting. Then one day, Mark had guided me lower with a firm hand on my shoulder: _'I wish you'd use your mouth, baby.'_

It gave me more clarity than any book could. Somethings you just have to experience for yourself.

And boy, did I.

It was sick, but I loved doing it, as much as I loved him calling me baby, like I was a girl or something. Nothing had ever felt so right, than to see his pupils dilate, the muscles in his lower abdomen tighten, to feel him twitch in my mouth. Salty and warm. I liked doing that more than I liked when he did it to me later, which was good in its own right, once he started being careful with his teeth.

I liked everything we did. Well, I didn't like it when he put his tongue in my ear. It was so loud and wet. I don't know why he kept doing that, maybe it was because it bothered me. He liked to tease me.

I had never felt closer to anyone in my entire life and didn't think anyone else had either. If they had, they would understand why I kept doing this with him, and no one would ever get anything done. When I wasn't with him, I was thinking about being with him.

I'd always liked romances, and now I had a deeper appreciation for them. I used to see girls hanging all over their boys and think it was pathetic, or like when a guy got a girlfriend and you wouldn't see him too much for a few weeks until they broke up. I understood now. And it was fine, as long as no one ever found out.

I gasped as little jolts of pleasure shot through me like lightning.

"You're so sensitive."

Mark was emphatically not. I was shocked at first how much speed and pressure he wanted. If someone handled me like that, I'd fly out of my skin. But we were studying what each one of us liked, what noises we could draw from one another. I don't know how guys and girls did it. Mark and me were so different, despite having the same parts. Learning his body was learning a new language, one which my tongue was eager to practice.

He had a hand running up my outer thigh, and the other up my shirt, thumb dragging along my nipple. I wasn't sure if guys were supposed to like that, but I did. I pulled him close to kiss, then he brought his mouth to my neck.

"Hey, stop." - The hand on my thigh moved inwards. He sucked. I squirmed. - "Mark, stop." - His other migrated up to my collarbone, then further until it tightened my vocal chords between his thumb and forefinger, keeping me in my place. He sunk his teeth in, a little. - "You're gonna leave a mark. _Stop_." I shoved at him back.

"I don't wanna," he whined playfully, hair all disheveled. He was gorgeous.

"I can't walk around with a hickey. I got people to answer to." I had told him this before, but Mark always did what he wanted.

"You gave me one."

"I asked you first." I'd have gotten red, but I was already flushed. I always was from the shoulders up, when we fooled around. Mark thought it was funny.

"Take off your shirt and I'll do it lower. Somewhere real discreet."

It didn't exactly take that long before we were finished.

My favorite moment was the minute or so after, where my head was still fuzzy from desire, before the shame surfaced. We were wrapped up in eachother, flies undone, legs tangled. I kissed the tip of his nose and fought back the urge to say something stupid, or bawl. Then, I nuzzled my face in his neck, maybe to hide.

"You sure you gonna do track?"

"Uh-huh. Coach thinks we can make it to states."

"I'll never get to see you. If you quit, we can do this all the time."

"You can come watch." He had come to watch me wrestle before.

"It was fun to see you on the ground all sweaty and bendy. Don't know if watching you run in circles will have the same appeal."

His Adam's Apple bobbed against my smile. It was really something to like someone like that, have them receive it, and reciprocate, like how the moon reflects the sun. The intensity of it all consumed me.

I rolled off him a second later, sat up, and groaned. "I still got to finish my math homework, if I wanna go to the rodeo tonight."

"You're brother ain't even around. We'll probably be back before he is."

"He'll know. I only have a few questions. Then I'll help you with yours."

Now he groaned. He didn't understand my obligation to academics. He never even brought home a single notebook, until I asked him to. I didn't want him to fail the 10th grade. I used to help Johnny with his homework, but Mark was a less compliant student. I always ended up just doing it myself. It was faster that way.

I reached down to grab my Geometry book from the floor, and Mark had to grab my hips to keep me from falling off the bed. Then I got to work on the loose-leaf sheet I had stuck in page 243.

He settled in behind me with his chin on my shoulder, looking down at my textbook in my lap.

"What are you doing? It looks like Greek."

"I gotta find the shortest distance between these points."

He put his finger on the page. "If it was me, I'd just take that point and move it where I wanted it."

* * *

Eventually, we left to walk downtown, so we could catch the bus and go to the fairgrounds for the rodeo. Soda was going straight there after work. Mark asked if I wanted to hotwire a car, but I didn't think it was a good idea so soon. Besides it was a nice day for a walk, not too windy.

We talked about the rodeo and Mark was telling me about how his dad was a cowboy.

"You ever want to meet him?" I asked.

"If I do, I do. Maybe I'll run into him tonight. Who knows?"

I wanted to reach for his hand, but I knocked my shoulder into his instead. If I had any long-lost family out there, I'd want to meet them.

We made our way down Peoria Avenue, when I heard the shouting. I set out on a dead run towards it. I knew exactly what it was.

"I wasn't askin' you for no permission, Ma!"

Curly Shepard was released from the reformatory.

I took the steps on the porch two-at-a-time and let myself in. Everyone was shouting.

"I'm gonna go live with Dad!" He seemed older than I had last seen him, his voice had dropped an octave or so. He was a bit taller, too, and had grown a stupid wispy mustache during the past six months. He had more acne than I remembered. I had missed him.

"I wish you would! We can give Doug a call right now, see if he's not in the drunk tank."

A shoe hit the wall by my head.

When Curly's mom saw me her whole tone changed. "Oh hi, Ponyboy, I didn't see you there."

"Hi, Barb." She didn't like being called 'ma'am' or 'Mrs.-Anything,' which was good, because I couldn't keep track of her surnames and husbands. But I kinda liked her. She was nice to me. "When did ya get out, Curly?"

"Four hours ago, and this bitch is already up my ass."

"Oh, that fucking mouth on him!" She was addressing me. "You wouldn't ever had talked to your mother like that. You're a good kid." - She turned towards Curly. - "Pony got all wrapped up in those murders, but you see him locked up? No? Betchya don't see him mouthin' off at his hearing to no judge neither."

Barb's standards for what made a kid good were kinda skewed. She always talked about me like that though, since we were little. If I was around, she'd compare Curly unfavorably to me, because I had good manners sometimes and did well in school. It'd be awkward, if Curly respected his mother or anything she said.

"You and that she-devil" - At my face, Curly mouthed, ' _Angie_.' - "better just wait 'til Timmy gets out, sees the two of ya'll -"

" _Ma -_ "

"The way you speak to me, I swear -"

"Ma, I'm going out with Pony. Ma!" He didn't even know where we were going, but Curly would go along with anything.

By the time we stepped out onto the porch, she already turned on her husband, who had added his two-cents. "Wanna mind your fucking business 'bout my child, Ned?"

I heard a _thud_ from inside and then something glass shattered. We didn't bother to look back. They were a normal east side couple.

Mark was hanging back by the sidewalk. I'd almost forgotten he was with me.

"You know Curly Shepard?" I asked.

Curly raised his chin. "You're friends with Bryon Douglas, right?"

"He's my brother," Mark answered, stiffly.

"Huh. He's out with my sister. Got some fuckin' balls. Good luck to him." He went on to call Angela some terrible things. What I remembered most about Angie was that she won the fifth grade spelling bee with the word 'resilient,' but that was a long time ago, so she might have changed, but you don't join in with talk like that about someone's sister, even if they start it.

"I haven't seen her around lately," I said. I hadn't really seen anyone but Mark lately.

"You're lucky." He looked around, like he was casing the whole street. "Everyone's dressed different now. Look at your hair, man!" His was slicked back. "Man, I can't believe I got stashed right before things got interestin' here. I barely believed it when they told me you killed that Soc, but I always told 'em you was tougher than you look."

"Gee, thanks."

"No one suspects you of nothing. You're out there stabbing folks, and Ma still thinks you're so fuckin' polite."

I tried to cock an eyebrow. "Why, that's 'cause I'm so fucking polite. You should try it on for size."

He swung at me, but I ducked and rammed my shoulder into him.

I kicked his ass once, when we had it out with the Shepard Gang. I don't remember what for. I knew him since forever, but had no memory of him that included reason or motive. Curly liked spitting for distance and breaking bottles against the sidewalk and never turned down a dare. He was a good buddy.

We joked around all the way to the bus stop, where we had to wait twenty minutes for the bus. I caught Curly up on a few things that were happening, best I could. He didn't say much about the reformatory, but he had told me about it before, about the gangs and how other boys always tried to steal his food. I think he didn't say much of his latest stint, because Mark was there and all. He was being uncharacteristically quiet, Mark I mean. Just kinda watching.

"I'm ready for some action. Ain't nothing to do in the cooler but work out. Lookit," - Curly lifted his t-shirt up with one hand - "I'm built like a motherfuckin' Curtis." He slapped his stomach.

He wasn't. He had some new definition, but he was round-shouldered and slouchy. I laughed.

"C'mon, Pony, hit me." He dropped his shirt and braced himself, with clenched fists.

I started punching him in the gut over and over again while we waited for the bus. Then we traded, and he punched me. It was dumb, but I always had fun with Curly.

The bus pulled up, and the driver let us three on with a dirty look.

* * *

I saw Soda straight away after we arrived, talking to a couple of bulldoggers he knew. There's always a lot of commotion at a rodeo. I like watching races alright, but I mostly liked hanging around the grounds. People were drinking and talking to each other and eating concession food. I knew a lot of people there, so we were making the rounds.

I lost Mark at one point, but spotted him talking to a girl in a powder-blue sweater.

Curly had a lot of catching up to do, and we hopped around group-to-group aimlessly. Being gone for six months will do that to you, and now Tim was up at McAllister doing his own six-months. It's hard for Curly without somebody to follow.

Over the speaker a voice announced, _"Up next is Sherri Valance running barrels with Barley."_

"Ain't that your girl, Curtis?" Some guy I barely knew asked. Everyone laughed, and I pretended I was in on the joke, but I didn't say anything.

Cherry rode real good, completed a cloverleaf aptly. The next girl to barrel race had some trouble right as soon as she gave her cowboy nod to the judge - she got bucked off and hit the ground with a thud and a cloud of dust. The horse went berserk and some pick-up men jumped in and tried to cajole it. The girl got out okay. They'd let her re-ride for it, if they could get the bronc under control. It was a nice looking horse, a palomino stallion.

When things settled, I turned to Curly. "I'm gonna go find Jennings." Not for any particular reason, but I wanted to find him.

I did, with the girl in the powder-blue sweater. They were kissing.

When you like somebody the way I liked Mark, every time his lips quirked up, every off handed compliment could send my heart soaring. If you gave someone that kind of hold on you, they could make you just as lousy. It didn't take much, and I felt completely displaced. It was hard to breathe.

"Mark," I said, because I couldn't manage anything else.

He said something to the girl that I couldn't hear. She pulled away and giggled, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. I hated her.

I waited for her to walk away, and looked around to make sure no one was near. "Who was that?"

"Who was who?" He didn't look cocky or pleased, but angry. What did _he_ have to be angry about?

I called her something I didn't think I'd ever call a girl.

"Oh, her? I don't know, didn't ask."

"What were you doing?"

"'I think that's obvious, buddy." He started to walk away, so I grabbed his arm, and he turned on me. "If you think we're going steady, you're out of your damn mind, faggot."

His quiet words stunned me, even more than the fist that followed them. I nearly lost my balance.

People started to notice us. Some came closer, probably thinking a fight was gonna break out, but when I didn't swing back and Mark didn't goad, they all went back to their own business.

I didn't realize until I tasted the blood trickle down past my lip that my nose was bleeding. I swore.

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I got in line for the John. Mark followed me. There was another one without a line, which just had a trough filled with ice, but we waited for the single stall. Maybe it would give him time to cool off.

It was dirty and cramped once we got inside, with just one toilet leaking onto the concrete floor. Mark slid the lock. I'm sure it smelled awful, but I couldn't smell much. The long looping towel had been pulled out of the dispenser and layed in a heap on the floor. I unspun a wad of toilet paper and pressed it to my nose.

Mark exploded. That was the first time I saw him like that. He was pacing around, ranting. I slunk down on the dirty floor and looked up at him, bewildered, trying to understand why he was so mad at me. Blood kept soaking through the toilet paper, and it disintegrated, turning into red pulp in my hand.

"Whatdaya think I feel, seeing you hanging all over him all day, huh? You think I don't see. You just couldn't wait for him to get out so you could suck his dick."

"Shepard?" I thought I was beginning to understand. "This is about Curly?"

"You think you can fucking ignore me, and I'll just take it? "

He was jealous. Oh. I hadn't been intentionally ignoring him, but I could see why he was upset.

"I'm sorry." It was me who said it. "I don't like Curly. I only like you."

He was breathing heavy, his nostrils flaring like a bull, when he paused and looked down at me. "Shepard's a dumb hood."

"He's an idiot. You see his mustache?"

His face broke out into laughter. It was lavish. He crouched down in front of me and sighed. "You make me crazy, Curtis. I mean it. I'm crazy about you." I latched on to this admission, a sign that he felt about me a fraction of what I did him.

He ran his thumb down my nose. It was tender. Then he kissed me, a powerful kiss laced with iron.

We broke apart just a little, so I still breathed in his breath. I wiggled my nose like a rabbit. It smarted, but I didn't think it was broken.

"Seeing you with him, it just got to me, ya know?" Now there was blood on his lip, too.

"Okay, I get it. Just maybe do me a favor and hit Curly next time instead of me?"

"There won't be a next time."

I nodded as I grabbed more toilet paper. I was still bleeding. I wouldn't hang out with Curly, if it bugged Mark. He was more important.

My t-shirt was stained down the front. Darry asked what happened to my face, when we got home.

"Curly Shepard got outta the reformatory." That was explanation enough.

"Well, put some ice on it."

I wrote a poem about Mark that night. I thought I loved him. I didn't think much of it, that he had hit me. That was just how guys were. They hit each other when they're hacked off. I mean, I wouldn't hit anyone outside a fight, but I'm different than most guys. And I kinda liked that I could make him jealous.

* * *

Content Warning: Intimate partner violence.

Note: There's nothing healthy about this relationship. I don't want anyone to think there is. I have a lot of thoughts about why Mark and Pony are the way they are, and why it's dangerous, and I'll try to organize them and share them soon.


	5. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

I didn't notice it at first, which is funny because it'd end up changing my entire life.

I took my normal seat in the back of English that day. Mr. Syme made eye contact with me, then tapped the tan case sitting humbly on his desk. The typewriter. He had finally brought it in.

I couldn't react right then, as other students were filtering in the room, but excitement thrummed through me. I could barely pay attention for the rest of the period, but that was okay. I had already finished the book.

When I returned and knocked on his door after my last class, he motioned me in through the window pane.

"You can leave it open, please," he said as I stepped inside. He was never behind a closed door with a student. Someday I would think about that.

There were still a lot of kids in the hallway. Their shouting mixed with the scent of ditto fluid in the air, pungent and warm. He put a folder over a stack of papers with purple writing - must have been tomorrow's quiz - and stood to walk around to the tan metal case. He squeezed the latch, revealing a turquoise Smith-Corona Sterling. It was small, as far as typewriters go. I guess it was supposed to be portable, but it was still too cumbersome to carry around.

Mr. Syme started talking about it. He was probably close to 40 years old. His hairline was receding, but it didn't look bad. He wore cardigans, unlike most male teachers who wore sport coats.

"I oiled it last night, the 'e's' a little misaligned, but …"

I could hardly hear him; I wanted to use it right then.

He opened the hood and the type-bars looked like the mallets inside a piano. Our piano at home was out of tune. Mr. Syme walked me through changing the ribbon. I already knew most of what he was saying from when they made us take a typing class in junior high, but didn't want to sound rude or ungrateful.

"Are you sure I can have it, sir?" I felt unsure, awkward about accepting it.

"There's no point in having two typewriters. I can only write one thing at a time." There was something humorous in his voice, but his smile was kind. He had a dimple - just one, on the left.

"I can pay you back." I didn't have much money, but I could figure something out.

"I wouldn't think of it. You're an uniquely gifted writer, Ponyboy."

I liked the fancy way he talked, and when he said my name, because a lot of teachers couldn't bring themselves to. Like it was distasteful or something. My first grade teacher called me 'Michael' until November, then Mom found out. Mom wasn't normally the one to lose her temper, but that really bothered her.

"As such, it's prudent you have the proper tools, " he told me. "Someday if you are recognized for your talent, I'll get to tell people, 'He was my student. I gave him his first typewriter.'"

Something bloomed in my chest. "You really think I could - be a real author, I mean?"

"I do. If you do not, I have no doubt it will just be circumstance."

I tried not to look too pleased.

"What do you write?" I asked, because he must write something. I just had the feeling we were the same somehow. Maybe it was like how Miss Doris said, we were reader-types and it made sense that readers wrote.

"Mostly homework instructions these days, but there was a time I wrote short stories. I even had a few published."

"Like in a book?"

For some reason, I think he thought this was funny. "Like in literary magazines."

I didn't know anything about literary magazines at the time, but I still thought this was impressive. I wanted to read what he wrote. He had never shared any of this with the class. I wondered why that was and why he was sharing this with me now. It meant a lot to me to get this information. Maybe it was because since Mom and Dad died, I didn't really get to talk to grownups much.

I was about to ask if I could read his stories, but he said first, "I want to ask you, Pony, if I could use your last assignment as an example in class?"

"If you take my name off it."

"You can do the honors." He handed a master sheet, and I rolled it into the type writer, as he found my poem. But I knew my poem mostly from memory. (I actually changed it a little bit between the original and what the typewriter produced, but Mr. Syme didn't say anything.)

I watched it manifest, sliding the carriage after each line break. The 'e' was off-center, like he said. I liked it, though. It had character.

I hated the typewriter room in school, the dissonance of keys and dings and zips. It grated on my nerves. But when it was just my own staccato keystrokes, I didn't mind. I might have even liked it.

I pulled out my poem. It almost looked real.

* * *

"Me and Stevie are goin' downtown, you wanna come?" Soda asked when he got out of the shower. I was sitting at our desk at my typewriter. I typed everything. Even the grocery list.

"Neither of you have to work?" I asked. They normally worked Saturday morning. I looked at the clock by the bed, they should have been gone by now.

"Old Man Floyd hired his nephew, and he keeps changing his hours, so Floyd keeps changing our's." He put on his underpants. "You ain't been by the DX in a while."

I shrugged. I guess I hadn't been.

He gripped my shoulder. "Come on get ready."

I shook my head 'no.' "I wanna stay home and finish this." Mark didn't like me going out without him. He had community service until four. If he wanted, I'd go out with him then. "Ain't you takin' Christine and Evie?"

Christine was Soda's new girl. She was kinda pretty, but in a loud way and laughed at everything Soda said, even if he wasn't meaning to be funny.

"We might meet up later."

"You like Christine?" I knew he didn't like her like he liked Sandy. Maybe he'd never like anyone like that again.

"She's just a good-time, you dig?" He grabbed some jeans from off the floor and looked them over, before sniffing the crotch.

I didn't think Christine knew that she was just a good-time. I thought about how she beamed when she was with Soda and figured she had fallen in love with him, but who wouldn't? I kinda felt bad for her.

"So you're just sleeping with her?"

"Not yet, we've been holding at third base, but I'm sure I'll make it home soon." He pulled on the jeans. He put them on both legs at a time and shimmied into them. That's my brother, for you.

"What about you?" - I startled, scared that we were on the same base and he might recognize me there - "Any girls you fixin' to make a move on?"

I thought about lying then, about inventing a character that could stand in for Mark and be the subject of all the things I wished I could talk over. Only I knew it wouldn't work. "Not really."

"Okay," he said skeptically.

He left, and I stayed home until Mark called.

* * *

I would plead temporary insanity later. There was no other possible explanation for what I did. They were the actions of a crazy person. I typed one of the poems I wrote about Mark, folded it and put it in my back pocket. Took it with me when I met Mark at the vacant lot. Then I _read_ it to him. I'm not kidding. I don't know what compelled me. That's just how lovesick I was. It seemed reasonable, until he responded.

I never knew what I was getting with Mark. I could show him a drawing I drew or tell him an idea I had for a story and he might say, _"Hey, that's pretty good,"_ or _"You really made that? Is there anything you can't do?"_ or he might laugh in my face. That's what he did when I read him that poem. He laughed.

It was not a funny poem. Maybe the hard ground could open up and swallow me.

"What's that supposed to be?" he asked.

"It's just something I had to do for English," I lied, saving face. Then to defend my poem and sanity, I said, "I don't think it's very good," - that was true, now - "but Mr. Syme says I could be a real writer someday."

"Man, that's so stupid." - something broke in me, maybe it was rib - "Why are teachers always tryin' to sell us that phony encouragement?"

"What?"

"Mrs. Roberts was just telling me how I had _potential_ , how I was _smart_ , and could _be something_ if I'd just _apply_ myself."

"You are smart, Mark."

"About some things, but there ain't no point in us dreaming about stuff like that. It's the natural order of things. We'll be lucky to make it past the Arkansas River." He put his arm around my shoulder. "Come on. Let's find somewhere to fool around before we meet up with Bryon."

I nodded and crumpled my poem. Mark was right. It was dumb. I'd be a fool to take Mr. Syme seriously.

* * *

We met up with Douglas at the Dingo. Angie Shepard was sitting on his lap on the hood of a car. It had been a long time since I had really seen her. She looked like she was trying to look grown up, with too much makeup and too little clothing.

"I'm gonna be right back, stay put." Mark said, and left me with them.

"Hi, Angie."

"It's Angel now," she told me.

I said, "Okay."

Douglas glared at me. I don't know why. I think he might have suspected something was off with me and Mark. Truthfully, I didn't much care for Douglas, but he was Mark's brother so I put up with him.

Mark was taking a long time. Tom Wright, a soc in our grade, came over. "Hey Ponyboy, Bryon! How's by you?"

Douglas said, "Hey, Tommy. Nothin' much."

I didn't say anything. It took a lot of nerve for him to slum it at the Dingo with his buddies.

Tom Wright was in my history class. We had never spoken before, but that was a weird thing that had been happening lately, kids who had never talked to me started acting like we were friends. It was partly because of me being in the paper and everything, and partly because it was becoming cool to be poor. But not really, just the worn jeans, not the constant worry about making ends meet or getting jumped when you walked around your own neighborhood.

"Yeah, we're all heading back to my house. My parents are out of town. Wanna come over? I got a billiards table for my birthday."

"We'll come." Mark was back. I was feeling a little annoyed that he had left me there alone so long with Angie and Douglas, and that he volunteered us to go with Tom Wright.

We piled into Tom's corvair. We all had to sit on top of each other.

"Where were you?" I asked Mark, quietly.

"I met some guy. Got you some grass." He put it directly into my pocket, and gave me one of those looks that always made me melt. He could pour me into a mold, after a look like that.

Tom Wright's house was the nicest house I'd ever been in. It was huge. Like a real mansion. Like from a book or a movie or something. There was a lot of art on the walls, but it wasn't that interesting. I couldn't imagine having so much dough, you'd throw your money away on bad art.

About five minutes in Angie announced she was gonna go take a piss and went up the grand staircase. Even if they thought Bryon and me were super-cool, for being poor, you could tell they didn't feel as at ease with Angie. She was the only girl there.

Douglas said a lot about Angela, when she was upstairs. I was shocked that little Angie would do all that, but maybe this was hypocritical, because she wasn't doing anything I wasn't. I was glad Mark couldn't talk about me without incriminating himself.

We drank scotch (it was awful) and shot pool (I was awful). I tried to smoke the grass Mark got out of Tom's father's tobacco pipe. That didn't really work out. All the guys were talking but they didn't say much of anything. Mark was loving it though, even though he knew these guys less than Bryon and me.

Mark never felt awkward. He would size up a situation and become whoever he needed to be. He was always changing. It depended on who he was around. I wondered what he was like by his lonesome. I couldn't picture it. It was like he only existed when he was next to somebody.

I was a little high.

I wandered upstairs, without bothering to excuse myself. I didn't need to go to the bathroom. I was just bored and wanted to leave. I thought I might find a book. This seemed like a house that had books for decoration.

I heard a clatter and followed it to what I assume was the master bedroom, and there was Angie, riffling through the vanity.

She glanced up at me. "Hi, Pony."

"What are you doing?"

"Getting what's mine. You think I'm less deserving than Mrs. Whoever, who spawned that kid who calls pool _billiards_?" She was studying her reflection and putting on Tom's mom's earrings.

I shook my head. I wasn't torn up about it. If Tom invited us to his house, he got what was coming to him. I thought of Bob Sheldon trying to get his parents to tell him no. Maybe that's what Tom wanted too. Maybe he wanted his parents to come home to a house that reeked of reefer and a pillaged jewelry box.

"That a balcony?" I went out to it. I'd never been out on a real balcony before. I fished out my pack of cigarettes and wondered if Mr. ad Mrs. Wright appreciated this view.

Angie stepped out after me, wearing a floppy hat, the kind a lady might use to stay fair at the beach and spun around, bottle of wine in one hand. "How do I look?"

Her curls were squashed down, but she had a spark in her eyes that most greaser girls lost during puberty. "You look lovely." And I meant it. She reminded me of Scarlett O'Hara.

"Help me with this?" She held up the bottle.

I took it. "I think we need a corkscrew."

She pulled one out of her bra and a gold chain came with it reflecting the setting sun. "There was a few in the wine room. A whole fuckin' room filled with wine. People are starvin' in China."

"We ought to mail them some merlot."

I set out to try to open the bottle. We ended up mangling the cork, and somehow pressed it down into the bottle. It floated in there like a capsized ship. We sat on the balcony in the breeze and passed the bottle and the weed back and forth, taking big gulps and occasionally spitting out bits of cork. It was better than scotch, at least. It tinted Angie's teeth purple. She was shivering.

"You cold?" I asked. She wasn't wearing much.

She shook her head, but accepted my jacket. I was warmed by alcohol.

"You ain't been by lately. I'm surprised you and Curly haven't been at it lighting each other's pubes on fire, or whatever you idiots do together."

I didn't know why she had to be so crude. "I been busy with track."

"I know. You're on the a-squad. It's just" - she swirled the bottle, it looked like water circling the drain - "He thinks you're mad at him."

"Huh?"

"I know, it's stupid. He can't help it, I came out first and he didn't get enough oxygen."

I couldn't tell if she was joking. I didn't know what to say.

She looked at me, then abruptly took off the floppy hat and put it on my head. I shrugged it off and she said, "Please, please, please."

"Angie!"

"It's Angel. Remember when we used to play dress-up?"

It was funny, I hadn't until after she asked. But then I did. It unearthed a memory of going through Barb's closet. She seemed really glamorous when we were young, before I knew better. She had all kinds of dresses and accessories that my mother didn't. I remembered going through them all with Angie. I hadn't thought about her as anything other than Curly and Tim's sister in so long. But there was a time, when we were little, before every game was divided into boys versus girls, where we were just as much friends as Curly and me.

"Yeah," I took a drag. "I remember."

Suddenly, I heard Douglas's voice. " _Angel!_ "

But she held my gaze for a second longer. She had blue eyes, just like her brothers, only a little lighter. She might even have been a little pretty, if she didn't have all that crap on her face.

"Hold your fuckin' horses, Bryon. I'll be out in a second!" She shouted and stood.

"Angie," I called as she walked away. She didn't correct me. She turned back. "My jacket. You don't want to make Bryon mad."

"Oh, I might just."

I didn't dig. I hated making Mark mad. Dread started curling in my stomach. I started getting worried I was gone too long.

She let the jacket slip past her arms and took a couple steps toward me, before handing it over. She leant in and kissed my cheek, which seemed grown up and charming, yet painfully young.

I smiled and wondered what it would be like to have a sister. I thought I might like it.

* * *

That night I thought about the time we played baseball with the neighborhood kids, and I lost my two front teeth. We used pie pans for bases. I was in the outfield but I didn't even really know how to play though I had insisted I did. I was sitting in the dead grass and watching a sparrow soar across the sun, when the baseball eclipsed it and hit me in the face, knocking my teeth back - not out, back. They were flat over my tongue. My mouth was filling with blood but I clapped my hand over it and cried and refused to move my hand to show Mom and Dad. Do you know that feeling? Like maybe you're not really hurt until someone sees the damage. Eventually, they pried my hand away. My teeth had to be yanked out. We didn't go to the dentist. Dad heated pliers on the stove and waited for them to cool, though they were still warm when they touched my quivering lips, before he pulled them away and handed the pliers to Mom ( _"Josie, I just can't."_ ), so she had to do it, while he held my head to his chest. I heard his heart pounding, through his other muscles. I looked at his face and it was all scrunched up like a pile of dirty laundry. Mom snapped the teeth out with efficiency, one and then the other. The sound was more painful than the act. They were just baby teeth, nearly rootless. I got to eat icecream for dinner that night.

We'd never believed in the Tooth Fairy, because Mom refused to lie to us. I read before that in Egypt the tradition is to throw baby teeth up into the sun, but mine were still in a Gerber jar in the junk drawer along with our umbilical cords (Except for the one that I planted in the garden to see what would sprout from it. You can probably guess that nothing did, butthat tooth's still buried there, in its guileless grave).

I laid in bed and wrote a short story about the sun and babyteeth in my head. I called it "Icarus and The Tooth Fairy." I did not type it. It would've been stupid to type it. When I woke up the next morning, I had forgotten it all but one line: _The teeth in her pocket were worthless._ I'm sure it wasn't that good. If it was good, I would have remembered it, but I would never know the rest.


	6. Chapter Six

**See end of chapter for content warning.** A lot of things happen in this chapter. I strongly advise reviewing the warnings, if you have any sensitivities, before deciding to read.

* * *

**Chapter Six**

If someone had told me six months ago that it'd become a normal thing for me to be naked in a bed with someone - a guy, at that - in half a year's time, I'd have thought they were off their rocker. I thought back then that if I met a nice girl, I might not have to worry abour sex until I was married. It's amazing how quick things can change and what you can get used to.

Mark's bed was up against the window. It didn't have curtains or anything, but it looked out onto a rotting wood fence.

Our bodies were draped only in daylight. I didn't mind being like this in front of Mark. It was exciting, to see and be seen. Besides, I thought I was pretty normal for fourteen. I spent enough time in the lockerroom to know I seemed about like everyone else, other than not being circumcised. That didn't bother me either. Don't get me wrong, I was insecure about a lot of things: my ears, my laugh, the face I made when I came … But you can't live your life hung up on all that stuff, if you want to have fun.

We were having a lot of fun, until ...

I scampered out from under him to the head of the bed, panicked. "Whatta you _doin'_?"

"I'm tryin' to fuck you."

Shock drew the blood back to my center. I was cold and limp. "You want to do _that_ \- to me - _there?_ "

"Yeah, now let me -" He grabbed my calf and tried to pull me down toward him, but I ripped my leg from his grip. "Hey!"

"No, I don't want to."

"Well, I do." He reached for me again.

I flinched. Mark noticed. His face went pensive as he sat back on his heels, and I averted my eyes. I don't know why I flinched like that. He'd only gotten aggressive a couple of times since that night at the rodeo.

I tried to scoot further away, but my back hit the headboard. Feeling suddenly modest, I put his lumpy pillow over my lap. The air seemed stale and still now. His sheets were stiff and stained. He needed to wash them.

"I just - I'll blow you again," I offered, staring at my own knee.

"I'm gettin' real tired of being patient with you." His eyes were so cold, I got goosebumps.

I chewed my thumbnail. "We haven't even talked about it."

"You're such a fuckin' girl, Curtis. I might as well be with one, if you won't let me do anything." He huffed and threw his back on the bed.

Only Mark could make me feel like a faggot for _not_ wanting to get fucked up the ass.

And I thought I'd been pretty generous. My jaw still ached with how generous I was earlier. I didn't understand why that wasn't enough for him. Mark was only a year older than me, but I sometimes felt young and foolish around him when it came to this stuff. He had already sex before with two different boozed up girls, at two different parties. He had told me about it, in more detail than I wanted. He called them 'opportunities.' It made me uneasy.

"I think I should go."

I got up and gathered my clothes as I went, leaving Mark sulking on the bed. I put on my underwear, then my jeans, and kept looking for my shirt. There had been no hesitation when I had disrobed that morning - kissing and walking backward with my eyes closed, tripping out of my jeans, but avoiding the furniture, not bumping into walls or the door frame. We spent a shameful amount of time together here like that lately. Douglas's mom was back in the hospital. She had gotten an infection. They had to take the rest of her foot. I thought that was horrible, but Mark didn't seem that concerned.

I found my shirt near a dead houseplant, then caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror from the hall. I stepped into the bathroom and looked at myself. There at the junction between my neck and my collarbone was a small red bruise. I buttoned up my shirt and adjusted the collar. It was nearly choking me. I was annoyed. I'd have to be careful for a week. It was late April. The weather was warming up.

Mark came into the bathroom unclothed and unfettered. I watched in the mirror as he stepped behind me, and put his hands on my hips. He was just a little bit taller than me then (by the end of summer I'd have an inch or so on him).

"You gonna get dressed?" I asked.

"Why, can't resist the temptation?" He kissed me behind my ear, real sweet-like.

"That's not it." I bit my lip, before telling him, "I asked you not to leave a mark."

"Come on, don't be like that, baby." He tugged my shirt down, and traced the hickey with his thumb. "People should know you belong to me." He pressed down on, massaging it. He was real good at that, mixing pain with pleasure. "You just get me so horned-up, baby. Can you blame me? Look at you." Chin on my shoulder, he aligned himself along my back. He was hard.

I reddened. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about having sex with Mark. I thought about it a lot. My imagination was relentless. Sex was no exception, but my fantasies were soft and unfocused. I was less sure about those things outside my head.

One hand traveled to my front. I stiffened, thinking he was going to reach lower. But I felt the pads of his fingertips beneath my shirt, lightly caressing below my navel. Mark knew all my sensitive spots.

I was afraid there was no turning back after anal intercourse - That's what it was called. I remembered the library book. - I'd be queer for real. I loved Mark. I wanted to be with Mark, but that seemed scary and irreversible. I wasn't ready to be a real homosexual. And I was also worried that he wouldn't like it as much with me, as he did with a girl. Then he might not like me at all. But maybe he'd get sick of waiting, anyway. Maybe if I just got drunk enough, we could get it over with ...

"You think it hurts?" What he had tried had hurt - a sharp, burning pain - but I wasn't expecting it.

"People wouldn't do it, if it didn't feel good. I'll make you like it."

"What if I want to do it to you?" It only seemed fair.

"No," he answered firmly.

"Why not?" I didn't actually know if I wanted to do that to Mark. He could improve his personal hygiene.

His reflection looked at me like I was dumb, "'Cause you're more of a sissy."

I was about to say something about going home, but he spun me around so I was faced with the real him.

He said, "Stay."

"I don't want to do that - I mean, not never, just not today, okay?"

"You're making it into too big of a deal. It's not like you can get knocked up."

"But I'd want to, you know, take a shower first."

He jerked his head. "Shower's right there." I shook my head. "Come on, you're the cleanest guy I know, Curtis."

"Mark … "

"Fine. Just don't go, baby. I'll be good."

He put his arms around me and I leaned into him, resting my face in the crook of his neck.

"Are you mad?" I asked, feeling oddly timid.

"Naw, when am I ever mad?"

"Will you put on pants at least, if I stay?"

"Ouch. You might hurt a guy's feelings, talkin' like that. I'd never ask you to put more clothes _on_."

I playfully pushed him out the door, before closing it.

I had to pee. There wasn't any soap near the sink. I pulled back the curtain and saw a sliver of soap covered in curly dark hairs. They weren't Mark's. All of his hair was golden. So I rinsed them off and scrubbed my hands under water for a minute and tried not to think about what I had put in my mouth earlier. My head hurt.

I opened up the medicine cabinet. There was a punch of prescription pills for Bryon's mom and a tube of some kind of ointment that was leaking on everything. "Mark!" I called, I didn't have to shout. You could get to any other room in his house in about eight steps. "You got any aspirin?"

"Uh, yeah, sure. I got somethin'. I'll get it." I could hear him rummaging around in his room.

I went out to the living room, where he met me in blue jeans.

"Here," he said, "take a couple of these." He handed me a tin of Tylenol, before walking to the kitchen.

I sat on the couch and popped open the lid. They looked a little different than the picture on the outside. A little off white, a little too small. I didn't normally take Tylenol, though. I didn't think much of it at the time. I dumped some in my hand. I didn't even count them, just threw them back into my throat. I honestly couldn't tell you what I was thinking. I guess I just wasn't. I never think.

They left a bitter taste in my mouth.

"Did you take 'em already?" He handed me a old jam jar filled with water. "Drink this, you'll upset your stomach."

I drank the water. I normally don't take pills with water, but I wanted to get rid of the aftertaste, and it seemed like a peace offering.

"Let's watch TV while I can. Bryon's talking about pawning it."

It was still early enough that cartoons were on. Mark liked cartoons, especially those Looney Tunes. I don't remember what was on exactly, but I remember how I had laid with him and rested my head on his bare chest. We shared a cigarette and tapped it on an ashtray on a metal TV tray table. He ran his hands over my back, chuckled when someone got flattened by an anvil. It lulled me into a trance.

As the news came on at noon, his heartbeat inexplicably grew louder and louder.

There must not have been anything too interesting going on in the world that day, because we went back to making out. He rolled us over so he was on top. I could feel each strand of his hair drag across my cheek as he kissed on my neck. It felt better than anything I had ever felt. Until he started sucking on my nipples. That was truly the best feeling anyone could ever feel. I was lava. I was a volcano about to erupt. I was going to - I was about to -

Mark lifted his face. His spit cooled on my chest.

"Please," I said. I wanted him to go back to doing that. I wanted more. I wanted everything. I wanted him.

"You're being so loud the neighbors might call the fuzz."

Was I? "Sorry."

"Don't be. You're being so good for me, baby. Don'tcha feel good?"

"Uh-huh." My heart was beating so fast. "I love you." It was the first time I told him.

He said, "I know you do."

A few seconds or an hour later, I had to grip onto the arm of the couch to keep steady. It was bobbing around, like a boat at sea.

"I feel funny," I said. I was sweating so much, it was running down my forehead and into my eyes.

"You're fine. Lift up your hips." He undid my pants and started pulling them down.

Something was wrong. I thrashed around under him and knocked over the metal TV tray table. It hit the ground with a clang. I winced. It was so loud. There were ashes all over the floor, the Tylenol tin had popped open too.

He was trying to get me to stay still, when something must have caught his eye, because he leaned over the edge of the couch. I grabbed at his arm, to keep him from falling into the carpet and drowning. He resurfaced holding the tin. He looked at it. He looked around the rug. He left me.

"Mark, come back."

He was looking under the couch. What was he looking for? Should I look too?

"Wait - How many did you take?"

"How many what?"

"Pills." He grabbed my face and looked me in the eye. "You're burnin' up."

"Yeah. 'Cause I'm lava."

"You're fucked up. How many pills did you take?"

I held out my hand and recalled what it looked like before I swallowed the pills. I took the memory and overlaid it on my palm. I tapped each spot I remembered one being, but I couldn't remember how to count them. "This many. Like this."

Mark laughed, but like he was trying not to. His lips were closed and I tried to pry them open them with my fingers and let the laughter burst out, because I loved his laughter. It made me so happy. I wanted it to leave his mouth and rush into mine, fill my lungs with gold. Or maybe I should keep his mouth closed and the laughter would spray out of his nose like chocolate milk like from Soda's when we were kids and Dad danced in the kitchen.

He lugged me over to the kitchen sink. I was having a hard time standing. The grip in my hair made me moan, as he forced my head up. He shoved his fingers into my mouth. His nails scratched the back of my throat. Nothing happened.

He took his fingers back and wiped them on his jeans. "Think I trained you up too good, baby."

"What?"

"Let's go to the payphone. I gotta make a call, and no one paid the phone bill."

"Why?"

"They weren't Tylenol, baby."

"What were they?" I asked, feeling nervous. "What did you do to me?"

"Don't get shook. It's just some sass."

I didn't know what sass was. "Why do you have it? Did you take any?" My heart was pounding outside of my body, and it was making hysterical patterns everywhere in the air.

"Naw, I wanted to see what it'd do to you first." He was running around, putting on a t-shirt.

"I don't understand."

He started buttoning my shirt, which I didn't remember unbuttoning. "You were all uptight, I wanted to loosen you up a little. I didn't think you'd take more than a dose. You're stupid for someone so smart."

"Can we go get Soda? I want Soda."

He slipped on his shoes and tried to put mine on me, but I fell into the counter. "No, but I'll get you a coke, if you come with me to the payphone."

A coke sounded good. I was awful thirsty.

* * *

At the payphone I got down to look at a swarm of ants that swirled all over the Pepsi bottle I dropped on the pavement. There were so many, and they were all talking over eachother in their funny little voices. I couldn't tell what they were saying. I got closer and brought my ear to them.

Mark looked at me. "Stop that. You're gonna get hurt." He turned back to the phone. "Not you … I told you I'm not sure, at least four … What do you mean you don't know? Where do you get it?" I stopped listening. I stood up and started walking south. I had something important to do.

Mark hung up the handset and caught up to me.

"You're gonna be fine. I just gotta make sure you don't run into traffic. Let's go back to the house."

I did not want to go back to the house. "I need to go to the cemetery. I need to see Dally. I want you to come too."

"Dallas Winston? He's at the cemetery? He waiting for you, buddy?"

"They all are. We got to go before the sun sets. Have you ever seen a sunset?"

"Yeah, the world goin' dark every night. I've heard of that before."

Taking Mark to see the sunset was the most important thing anyone ever had to do. He did not understand why this was so important, but he let me lead him there.

"Johnny told me to stay gold." My talking was tangled up. "He said, 'Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.'"

"Stay gold, Ponyboy," Mark repeated, amused.

"So you need to see the sunset, because it's too late for Dally. But, Mark, maybe it ain't too late for you yet. I love you so much."

He sighed. "I'll watch the sunset with you, baby."

There was garbage everywhere. The first tornado of the year hit northeast of downtown earlier in the week. The sirens sounding woke us all up Tuesday night. It wasn't that bad. No one died or anything, but the streets were covered in branches and shingles and trash was baking in the middle of the road, even four days later. I hoped it wouldn't come back.

Oaklawn Cemetery was in the middle of everything. You could see the skyline and the water tower. Twenty acres of graves and oak trees strangled by road noise. The poor don't even get peace in death. I used to go there a lot and read right after we buried Mom and Dad. I stopped for a while. I don't know why. We had to jump the gate to get in. The groundskeeper locked up at four and you weren't supposed to be there, but I figured this was important enough to call for tresspassing.

I was energized with purpose, dizzy and fast. Mark was having trouble keeping up. I was trying to find Dally and Johnny, but couldn't. Maybe their graves were unmarked or maybe they had been cremated and hadn't needed graves. I didn't know. But I knew where Mom and Dad were so I went there, to the far end by the concrete wall that separated them from the people traveling on the highway.

"Oh no, their tree." I rushed toward it. It had fallen down, roots ripped from the earth. Had they heard it? It looked like it might have been struck by lightning, black at the bottom. I tried to walk the tree like a tightrope, but fell onto their grave. I crawled into their bed when I was much too old.

They shared one headstone nearly flushed with the ground and one plot. They were stacked on top of each other in their caskets, like a hand on top of a Bible or their wedding rings on their dresser. We saved them. They used to be shaded by an oak tree, but now they were bathed in light from the sun as it sank. I brushed moss from our name.

What did they look like now, underground? They wouldn't be clean skeletons yet, would they? Were they rotting? Would worms be able to eat their way into their caskets? Eat _them_?

"Man, you're pretty twisted," Mark said. I didn't know I was talking out loud.

"Are your parents here?"

"Dunno." He was looking around. There wasn't much to look at. We were cradled by a concrete wall and the fallen tree.

I sat down with my back against the trunk and Mark joined me. We watched the sunset over the Cherokee Expressway. It was the best one I'd seen yet. It sounded so beautiful. I wanted to hold hands, so we did. It was pretty private there.

He started kissing the side of my face and shifted closer.

"Just watch okay? Please, just really watch." - he was looking at me intently - "The sky, not me. Please."

It happened really fast. I didn't understand. He twisted my arm behind my back, so hard I thought it might pop out of the socket and pressed me face-down into the grass.

I yelped. More confused than anything. I tried to get out of the hold but couldn't. His knee jammed into the back of mine. I twisted. I wanted to see his face. "Why are you doing this?"

He forced my head down, and it hit something so hard I thought I was gonna black out.

"You need to shut the fuck up, if you don't wanna get caught like this," he hissed in my ear.

It was like a flipped switch or a chemical reaction. My whole body went rigid and I couldn't move.

He didn't have to do this. I would have put out eventually, probably pretty soon. I'll never understand why he did it.

It hurt.

Like being split apart at first. Then as he plunged in and out, it felt like he was taking my entrails with him. He was turning me inside out. The feeling got bigger and bigger, and when it was too big to be contained it snapped apart from me and floated away. Not far, maybe three feet from my body. Each time I was scraped across the dead grass and the soil, it got further.

My vision tunneled, then went white.

When he was done, I crumpled up like a discarded tissue - used and full of snot. He laid on his back on top of the grave.

"Fuck, that was good."

I pulled up my pants with trembling hands. The sweat was cooling on my back. I was afraid I could smell shit. I couldn't look up.

I was crying by then. Hot tears were leaking out my clenched eyes.

I heaved, hoping that I could expel whatever had been tainted out of me, but nothing came up. I was empty.

I felt a hand on my head, stroking my hair. "Hey baby, don't cry. You're okay."

I couldn't stop.

He gathered me in his arms. I clung to him, because I was terrified.

"It's okay," he said soothingly, as he rubbed my back. "It's just the drugs."

He grabbed me by the chin and made me look at a spot in the ground. "Lookit, you liked it, see? I told you you would."

It clung to the grass like some sort of disgusting spital from a terrible insect. Had I liked it? I hated myself.

I was humiliated.

I looked at the headstone.

"I think I'm dying."

"No, you ain't." Mark held me and repeated, "It's fine. You're fine. It's just the drugs. You're wiped out."

He kissed me. I kissed him back. We kissed until I quit crying.

I said, "I love you, Mark," because I wanted to hear it back. When he didn't respond, I prompted, "Do you love me?"

"Sure, baby, I love you. You made me really happy tonight."

He walked me home, or maybe just somebody who looked like me. I think I might have never left that cemetery, that night.

* * *

I was still seeing some spots like I'd been staring into the sun for too long. But I thought my head was mostly clear.

"Don't try to make conversation. Just get to bed. Go ahead. I'll watch you go in." We were at the corner by the vacant lot. "Wait," Mark said and fussed at my collar a bit, like it was my first day of third grade, just a summer between it and first. I wasn't ready.

I didn't look back as I made my way to the porch and let myself in. _Just get to bed, don't make conversation._

"Get a load of _that_." I hated Steve so much. Wasn't it obvious I needed to get to bed and not make conversation? But now everybody - Steve and Soda and Two-Bit and Darry - was staring at me.

"Maybe we ought to ship him to a leper colony," Two-Bit said.

Suddenly, everyone was laughing. It seemed really loud. It sounded like how the funhouse mirrors at Bell's Amusement Park looked.

"Where were you, Ponyboy?"

"Hanging around town, driving along the ribbon." That seemed reasonable. Very reasonable. It was time for me to stop making conversation and get to bed.

"Who were you with?"

"Mark."

"You were with Mark?"

"Yup."

"Just Mark?"

"That's what I said."

Darry dropped his head and barked out a laugh. "I got to run into work. We're talking about this in the morning."

I said, "Sure, okay." I didn't know what he was talking about.

Soda straightened up from where he'd been hunched over and told me, "Pony, go look in the mirror."

So, I walked to the bathroom. I dragged my feet too much on the carpet, then I over-corrected and started marching. Was this normal? How do you walk? I started thinking about my arms and what the hell were they supposed to do? I didn't want them anymore. They were useless.

Then, I looked in the mirror and wondered if I was hallucinating. My neck was covered with red and purple hickeys. Completely covered. When had that even happened?

The guys were still laughing, as they squeezed into the bathroom with me. Two-Bit hooked his finger on my collar and peaked down the front of my shirt. "How far down does it go?"

I swatted his hand away from me.

Steve looked me hard in the eye, but didn't say anything. I looked away.

"Get out. I need to take a shower."

"I'm sure you do!" More laughter. Nobody should ever laugh like that.

Soda took pity on me and shoved the boys out. I locked the door behind them.

I breathed heavy through my nose, as I worked up the courage to undress. One button, two button, three button, four button … For some reason, my hands were shaking. I didn't want to see. I didn't understand what had happened. I just knew that he had changed me. I could feel it in every cell in my body. I was different now.

Somehow I stood naked in the incandescent light. Bruises were beginning to take shape loudly, lewdly. I looked down past that stupid traitor. My knees were red and raw, from rubbing against denim. I had to rinse my briefs in the sink and bury my clothes under the rest of the dirty laundry in the hamper. I wanted to take off my skin and run it through the wash cycle on hot. But I could only take a shower. I lathered the bar of soap and scrubbed the stickiness off my legs, then the stickiness not on my legs. I sat down and plugged the drain, letting water from the showerhead run hot over me, then cold. I wished I had the will to drown myself.

I didn't leave the bathroom until there was no noise coming from the otherside of the door. Towel wrapped around my waist, I hoped they had all left by now. It was Saturday night.

I jumped when I saw Soda, sitting waiting on the bed. He hadn't gone out with Two-Bit and Steve. He had chosen to stay home with me. I loved him so much, I could bawl. His eyes scanned over my torso. I wanted him to ask what was wrong, what had happened. I wouldn't have told him, but I wanted him to ask.

He let out a low whistle. "Looks like somebody had fun tonight."

Somebody had.

I put on sweatpants, though I didn't normally sleep wearing sweatpants. I also pulled on a sweatshirt that used to smell like Dad. Now it only looked like something that would smell like Dad. I swam in it and crawled onto the bed.

"You got a girl!" He pounded on my shoulder. "I should have known. Why didn't you tell me? Who is she?"

"I - can't say."

"Why? Is it somebody else's girl?"

I shook my head. "I'm tired." I wasn't tired. I didn't think I'd ever go to sleep again.

"It's too early. Come on, Ponyboy, talk to me." Curious excitement danced in his eyes. I wondered what he'd say if he knew the truth about what I had done. "Okay, how 'bout I hold up a finger and you tell me when to stop."

I stared at him. I didn't get it.

"First base?" Oh. He held up one finger. Then, he held up another. When he held up a third he gave an approving chuckle, but when I didn't tell him to stop, his smile fell and his eyebrows raised.

I wasn't sure if that counted as a home run. I wasn't sure if maybe he should put up his thumb, too.

"Huh," he said. I've seldom seen Soda struckdumb.

I put his pillow over my face.

He removed it and looked at me for a minute. "That bad? First times are always awful."

I think I nodded.

"I never told you about my first time."

"Yeah, you did." It was just a month or so after Mom and Dad died. He came home and he told me all about it, right in this same spot.

"I didn't tell you all of it." He told me the rest. It was private and embarrassing. But it didn't compare to what had just happened. He wanted to hear about it, but I didn't even want to think about it. I didn't think I ever would. (In fact, I wouldn't tell anyone for over twenty years.)

"I guess you're a man now, huh?"

I'm not sure what Mark had made me, but I was pretty sure it wasn't a man.

* * *

The next morning, Darry had to drag me out of bed. I had never been so tired before in my life. Everything hurt. Everything. But I couldn't let on. I shifted in my seat at the table in front of two disgusting hard eggs. I couldn't fathom ever being hungry again.

"You can't sleep all day," Darry started. But I hadn't really been asleep long.

Dawn flooded the room by the time I had actually fallen to sleep. Before that, I just listened to Soda's light snore and arranged myself into several approximations of a sleeping body throughout the night.

Soda and Darry were both looking at me.

"You told him?" I asked Soda.

He looked at me apologetically. Sodapop could never keep a secret. One time we accidentally started a small fire at the bowling alley with Steve, and Soda told Mom not an hour after we got home.

I buried my face in my arms.

"If you're old enough to have sex, you're old enough to look me in the eye while we have this conversation."

I lifted my head and stared past Darry to the kitchen window, where Mom's garden was left unattended, derelict. It was overrun with weeds and crabgrass. Everything precious in it was dead. She had loved her garden. She put so much fucking time and care and love into her garden. How did I let this happen?

At least she wasn't here to see it. Mom and Dad would never know what I was.

I was so upset and Darry was so serious. "Did you use a condom?"

I nodded though we hadn't, because it was the correct answer for Darry.

His whole body relaxed. "Good. If you're gonna do it, you need to use a condom every fuckin' time. Right from the start. If you can't afford a rubber, you certainly can't afford no baby."

At the time, a condom cost about the same as a single. You had to decide if you wanted to have intercourse once or listen to a groovy song a bunch of times. It wasn't a choice I had to make. I wasn't going to get anyone pregnant.

"You gotta use your head, for once. You got too much fuckin' potential to get trapped here." He kept going on like that.

I had a headache. I wished he'd quit yelling.

"Darry, ease up. He hears you," Soda said. "Look, Pony, it's just you're real young. And we just want to make sure you're careful. Savvy?"

I nodded.

"Did Dad ever talk to you about this stuff?"

I shook my head. Before he died, Dad still called me 'baby' and 'Daisy,' and would sometimes pull me into his lap jokingly and say, _'You ain't too big yet, 'cause you're the baby. You'll be thirty and you won't be too big to be held by your old man.'_ I wanted him back.

We sat around the table all morning, as my brothers told me about another thing I'd never get to share with Dad, but they did.

I put my head back down and distantly listened to them argue about the rhythm method. (Darry did not think it was reliable, Soda did.) They both agreed, though, that if I wanted to do it again I should call the girl today.

* * *

I nearly passed out on the toilet later that day. There was still blood on the toilet paper. I was afraid he'd done some real damage, that my insides were torn up, and my bowels would leach into my bloodstream, and I'd go septic or something and die. Then they'd take me to the hospital, do an autopsy like on a crime show, and be able to tell what had happened. What I was.

It was that fear that kept me from doing something permanent.

I went to go lay back in bed, but I stopped in the doorway. It was that bed where we used to roll around laughing, where he had teased me for being so ticklish, where we held each other. We used to kiss on that bed, until he'd pushed my head down, even if I wanted to keep kissing. I should have known.

I went to the living room and laid down on the couch instead.

I was just spooked, I told myself. I was being irrational, because I had sex, and I took it too personally. I came close to calling Mark a couple times that first day. If I called him, saw him, talked to him, maybe everything would just be okay. I wanted to see him, but I also never wanted to see him.

Maybe we should do it again, I thought, when I was more prepared. He caught me off guard. That was it. I could force my body to relax. I could take shower first. Clean myself entirely. Everywhere. If I assented, maybe his eyes wouldn't seem so callous next time. Maybe it would be sweet. If he didn't have to hold me down, I wouldn't be so bruised.

I had made up my mind that we would try again. I would make this right.

"Ponyboy! Phone!" Darry called from his room.

It was ringing right by my head, but I hadn't heard it.

"Hello?"

"Hey, hey, hey, Ponyboy!" I froze, again. "I had a real good time with you yesterday. I was thinkin' -"

Possessed by the recklessness of my father, I hung up the phone. When Mark called back, it was my mother's stubbornness that made me do it again. I was their child, just as much as Darry and Soda, even if I didn't always feel like it. Even when they weren't around.

There was a freedom that came with letting someone shatter your entirety. I figured there was nothing whole enough left in me for him to break.

I laid back on the couch, listless as marionette with the strings cut.

I was done being a queer.

* * *

Content Warning: nonconsensual drug use, sexual coercion that culminates in sexual assault, intitmate partner violence


	7. Chapter Seven

**Chapter Seven**

I remember the next couple of weeks stilted and fragmented, like tuning into different channels on our black-and-white TV and watching scenes from different shows. Some channel's had signals that caught quicker. Sometimes you had to adjust the antenna and the picture flickered. Sometimes the volume dial was turned too far left, and there was no sound. Sometimes it was just static and whitenoise. Sometimes a valve blew and even that cut out.

Steve cornered me and gave me a slap on the back of my head. "What the fuck was that Saturday? Was it Jennings?" - _He knows. He knows. He knows. He knows._ \- "Are you doin' drugs with him?" - He didn't know. - "What were you on? You were so fuckin' out of it. What the hell's wrong with you lately?" He slapped me again and gave me a furtive lecture on drugs that I didn't ask for. "... do you wanna be like that? Like a fuckin' zombie in the gutter on 11th? They'll fuck up your life. Are you gonna do that to Soda, huh?"

I walked into History class late. Everyone stared. Some snickered, then whispered. The rest of the week went like that. My neck was apparently the most interesting thing going on at Will Rogers.

A paper football hit the back of my head in Geometry. I knew it was from a boy. Boys folded notes into footballs. Girls folded their notes to look like little envelopes. I didn't pass notes, so I didn't fold them. It said, _'Don't ignore me. 3:15 - south parking lot.'_ I threw away the note and wondered who he got to deliver it.

Darry asked why the door was locked, when he got home from work. "I don't know," I said. "It must have got bumped." _Great answer, genius._

The coach shouted, "Boys, quit faggin' around!" Then later pulled me aside to tell me my times were lousy. I already knew this. I was tired and sore. My body still hurt when it sat, and it hurt when it ran, and it hurt when I saw Mark walking out of the main office. I told the coach I would pick it up by next Saturday. He said, "You better. Recruiters are gonna be there. They won't talk to you yet, but you want them to remember you."

Two-Bit made jokes. They weren't funny anymore.

I wished Johnny was still around. I thought he might understand. But then I felt like a whiny kid, because it wasn't like I'd been hurt as bad as Johnny had been.

I took showers to get clean. Sometimes I touched myself in new places and considered things.

Mark tried to talk to me in the locker room. He punched the metal door by my head so hard it left a dent. I almost kissed him.

I was being held down, but I wasn't paralyzed this time. I was thrashing and hitting and kicking and screaming. Then I was being shook so roughly I got whiplash. Holding me at arms-length, Darry looked at me like I was possessed. Panting and drenched in sweat, I thought I might have pissed the bed. The picture came into focus. Sodapop was there too. His left eye was red and watery, in a day it'd be black. "Shit, but you got Dad's right hook." I had nothing of Dad's, but I wished I did. He was strong; I wasn't. I said, "I'm sorry." Soda stroked my hair, but I didn't like it. "It's okay, honey. You're fine, it's just a dream." His hair was golden in the moonlight.

Cigarette after cigarette, I smoked in search of the one that might soothe me. I wished I had grass, but I never bought drugs myself. Mark always got them for me. I missed grass almost as much as I miss Mark. I almost called him to apologize.

I let the phone ring.

Mom and Dad kept the hunting equipment in their closet behind a locked door and the key on Dad's keyring. Now we kept the key on their dresser. When no one was home, I went to their room and laid on the bed and stared at the arsenal. I wondered if they could see me. I wondered if I'd get to see them again. I imagined Soda seeing me without a face and closed the closet door.

Sometimes since Windrixville, I still smelled burning flesh, even when nothing was hot. I didn't realize it was real this time, when I took the pan out of the oven without mitts. Not until Darry grabbed my wrists and forced them under cold water. I didn't feel it. The pan left a black scorch mark on the linoleum.

On the top of my assignment, Mr. Syme wrote, _'See me after class,'_ in red ink.

I didn't take a shower for four days. "You're ripe," Soda said. I ran a bath. It was nearly cool by the time I stepped in.

Soda and Darry talked in hushed voices about how I was _'gettin' bad again.'_ Soda suggested later that maybe I should see if Mark wanted to hang out.

In our truck, I sat in silence as Darry drove me to a doctor appointment that we couldn't afford, which ended up with a prescription that we couldn't afford. Darry said he couldn't afford to fall asleep on a roof, either. After shining a light in my eyes, the doctor said I couldn't afford to get another concussion. We drove home in silence.

I couldn't be around Darry when I felt so hurt and fragile. This meant I could never be around Darry, as I felt hurt and fragile all the time. Maybe it had been that way all along.

I didn't draw and I didn't write. I basked in the glow from the TV as I fell asleep. The pills helped with that at least.

* * *

Then one day, Tom Wright snapped me out of it, if you can believe it. I was walking up the staircase for my first class and Wright shouted at me, "Stay gold, Ponyboy!"

I nearly tripped, turning to look back at him. I thought I must have been hearing things, but I wasn't. Gradually then suddenly, it was everywhere over the course of that week. I must've missed most of the build up.

I don't know why it caught on like it did. It should have seemed like nonsense to anyone else, but for some reason - the rhythm of the phrase, the incongruity? - it had infiltrated Will Rogers High (with a few variations of punctuation and spelling). People kept yelling it, it was written on bathroom walls, in the freshly distributed yearbooks, carved into the top of desks. I couldn't escape it. It was like a competition to see the strangest place someone could write it. Someone even managed to write it across the world map in Mrs. Chamberlain's room. She pulled down the map that centered the United States to show us something dumb about Columbus, and across Australia to the USSR it read, _'STAY GOLD PONY-BOY!'_ Mrs. Chamberlain didn't think it was funny, either, and she blamed me for it.

I couldn't understand why everyone was doing it. But I knew it was Mark that started it. It was always Mark. I don't know how he did it, but I knew what he meant. "Stay gold" held a new important message: _I know your secrets. And I can use them._

I can't tell you what that was like, not really, to suddenly be bombarded in public with something so intimate. It was jarring enough to wake me from the stupor I'd been in. I was antsy.

And the strange thing was, it also made me angry. I hated Mark, with an intensity that scared me. I don't know if you can know hatred until you hate someone you love, like I loved him. And I did still love him. I couldn't deny it, not even to myself. You couldn't hate someone like I hated Mark back then, without loving them too. You can't be betrayed by someone, unless you trust them in the first place, when you think about it.

I wasn't sure what he wanted from me, but I wasn't going to give it to him. Not over my dead body.

* * *

It'd been a while since I really hung out with Two-Bit. I hadn't realized it until I approached his car during our lunch hour.

"Hey! Stay gold, Ponyboy!" Two-Bit greeted.

"Aw, not you too!" I climbed into his passenger seat.

"You slummin' it with good ol' Uncle Two-Bit, today?"

I shrugged, feeling guilty about it because he was always a good buddy to me.

Two-Bit was telling me about how he'd crank called the mayor, but I couldn't hear him that well over his busted muffler and my own thoughts. It was just me and Two-Bit. Steve always did the math and quit coming to school every semester when he figured out how little work he needed to do to pass. He'd come back for final exams, if he needed to.

We drove to Dale's grocery store. I bought a coke, then grabbed a candy bar when I noticed Two-Bit staring at me. I hadn't been hungry lately, and I didn't need him reporting back to Darry

I walked back to the car and pretended not to notice a group of girls who were laughing at me behind their hands.

"It really bothers you, huh? The 'stay gold' thing?" Two-Bit asked, as he closed his own door. He didn't know they were Johnny's dying words, or that Mark was taunting me with them.

"Who'd like everyone makin' fun of them all the time?"

He shook his head a little. "You got it wrong, kid, ain't nobody makin' fun. They think you're a legend or something. That's mighty impressive as a sophomore."

"Well, they don't got to be talkin' 'bout me all the time." I didn't care if it was impressive. I didn't want it.

"It's just one of those things, like 'Kilroy was here' or that 's' everyone always draws in junior high. Don't take it personal."

People either thought I was some hero or a murderer, it was hard not to take it personal. No one at school thought of me as a real person anymore. I started to think maybe I wasn't.

"But it ain't like I did anything," I said.

"You saved those little kids from that fire."

I had forgotten about that, but I didn't think it was that noble when you were the ones who started the fire.

He looked at me, and I feared that he always knew more than he let on. "You know, if it was Soda or Darry, I reckon they'd like it."

"I ain't Soda or Darry, am I?" It was becoming more and more obvious. No matter how bad I wanted, I'd never be like them.

"Well, kid, if it really bothers you, I suggest not lookin' to ya right"

I looked out the window at the watertower standing stalwart and condescendingly over Tulsa. New words were painted across the tank in red bleeding letters:

_STAY GOLD_

_PONYBOY_

_Holy shit._

* * *

I was a wreck. There's always a certain amount of paranoia that comes with hiding something this big, but with one secret exposed I was waiting for another to appear. It was clear that if Mark wanted people to think I was a queer he could. I took some solace, at first, in that he couldn't say I had ever kissed him, without admitting he had kissed me. That we had done so much more. But I knew if Mark got people saying _'Ponyboy Curtis is a faggot,'_ they'd believe it. People already talked. And I knew he could find a way to walk away scot-free.

Mark always knew how to mess with my head. I chewed my nails so much they bled. I hoped he might get bored and would forget about me, which hurt in a way I didn't understand but it was what I wanted. I wanted to go back before the cemetery, before the water tower, before I knew what it was like to have a brief reprieve from my lonesomeness.

I tried to act normal, as I waited for everything to blow up. I went to school. I ran track. I did alright at that last meet, just barely edged out a freshman from Booker T. on the 110 metres hurdles. I visited Soda and Steve at the Dx, then decided I would never do that again. Evie and Gina came by. Steve and Evie kissed, big open wet mouths like catfish. I could see their tongues. Things like that are disgusting when you're not the one doing them. Gina kept trying to talk to me. She had the same obnoxious giggle as her sister. I didn't think I could ever like anything that came out of either of them. I went home.

Looking for distractions after track ended, I tried to tune the piano but couldn't without Mom. So, I started to weed her garden until my hands were cracked and raw. I went to the library to see if I could find a book that would tell me if it was too late to try to plant the sack of bulbs I found in the coat closet. I ended up taking that job as a library clerk with Miss Doris. Darry didn't want me working at first, but he said I could for the summer then we'd see.

I didn't read any more about homosexuality and I didn't even think about it.

I was determined to move on. I would be neither homosexual nor heterosexual. If some people liked guys and some people liked girls and some liked both, then it made sense that some would like neither. Nothing. I would be that. I'd like no one. I'd never have sex again. I'd die alone. It was fine.

Maybe I could get a dog and live in the woods.

* * *

It kept on like that for a while. Then on a Friday, over the loudspeaker it was announced, _"Ponyboy Curtis, please report to the principal's office."_

It was in the middle of class. Not between bells. That's how I knew it was serious.

I walked down the hall with whatever it is that propels a death row inmate from their cell to the electric chair. One foot, then the other.

I was getting scared that maybe I'd done something and would get paddled, even though I knew I hadn't done anything at school lately. I get real nervous like that sometimes. I always have.

I'd never been paddled before. Not in grade school. Not at home. And I wasn't about to. I wouldn't drop my pants and bend over. No sir. I would refuse. They could call Darry. I didn't care. I just wasn't going to do that. The panic filled up my lungs, then up to my forehead. I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants before I got to the office.

The secretary looked at my curiously, before telling me to go right in.

There were two uniformed police officers with Mr. Matson, which scared me but I tried not to show it. I was going to be arrested for sodomy. I knew it. My secret would be out. They'd send me to the reformatory, where everyone would know I was a queer. I'm sure that'd go over real well with the other juvenile delinquents. Or maybe, if I was lucky, they'd send me to an insane asylum.

Mr. Matson smiled when I came. The cops didn't.

Mr. Matson wasn't a bad guy, just a little clueless. He cared a lot if kids thought he was hip or not, which made him pretty rank, if you asked me.

"Ponyboy, just the kid I wanted to see." - well, he had called me down - "Please have a seat. These are Officers Ward and Patterson."

I sat down across from his desk in an uncomfortable wooden chair. The cops stayed standing.

Mr. Matson glanced between the cops, before he said, "You know I've always liked you. I liked your brothers. Darrel was a senior, my first year as principal." - I had heard this before - "I was fine with just letting this blow over. There's a week left of school, I don't see why we have to make any waves; however, the officers have informed me that this ' _Stay Gold, Ponyboy'_ trend, has spread beyond our school walls."

"There's been a string of vandalism to city property," Ward cut in. "It's been written on the water tower and several police cars."

"It wasn't me."

Mr. Matson said, "No one thinks it was." - judging by the cops' faces, I don't know if that was strictly true - "Look, you're a popular guy. The other kids look up to you." I stared at him. I didn't think any of that was true for one second. "So just tell them to ease up, okay?"

What did he want me to do, hold an assembly? I would just tell everyone to stop. I should have thought of that weeks ago.

Patterson was blond and seemed a little nicer than Ward. (This was the first time I ever met Patterson.) "No matter who's doing it, we can't have these drug references defacing our community."

This was the first I heard they thought it was a drug reference. I had no idea what was going on. At all.

I looked at Mr. Matson. "Am I in trouble?"

"Of course not, we just had to have this conversation." Did we? It seemed like a big waste of everyone's time.

"Okay. I guess I'll tell everyone to cut it out."

I left the office, but turned back when I remembered I had to see the guidance counselor to sign up for Creative Writing next year. Mr. Syme had asked me if I wanted to.

* * *

A knock on my bedroom window woke me up on Saturday. The clock said 5:12, which meant it was about 5:25am.

I was drowsy and confused as I made my way to the window and peeked through the blinds.

It was Mark. He saw me. The sun was just coming up and Mark was outside my window.

I spread the slats wider and mouthed, _'Go away.'_

He said, "I need to talk to you." I could hear him clearly through the window pane.

He made a motion like he was going to start knocking on the glass. I brought my finger to my lips to tell him to stop. He'd wake up Soda. I didn't know what to do. I jerked my head to indicate, _'I'll see you outside.'_

Vaguely disoriented - the sleeping pills did that to me - I pulled on yesterday's jeans, crepted past Steve's sprawled form on the couch, and stepped out onto the porch.

Mark was there. I looked at his jeans that were as wrinkled as mine.

"What do you want, Mark?"

"You have so much fuckin' nerve." His voice was loud and shaking. "How do you think I feel? You ignore me for weeks, without any warning, you just - I know you're mad at me, but how can I fix it , if you won't even talk to me?" His voice cracked.

It was the first time I had looked him in the eye since that night. His eyes were red and gold and wet, I noticed with a start. I hadn't seen him cry before, I figured he didn't. He looked oddly brittle, like a twig about to be snapped. I wanted to hold him together.

I hadn't considered that he might feel as stressed as I did by our lack of contact. Maybe I hadn't considered his feelings enough. Maybe it was cruel to sleep with someone for the first time and then ignore their calls. "Let's go talk at the lot, okay?"

Since that night at the cemetery, I had begun to think of Mark as inhuman. I knew that was terrible, to forget someone's complexities. It wasn't how I was raised. But it was easier to reconcile my hurt and anger when I could pretend he wasn't a boy who loved westerns and a child who'd watch his parents kill each other and that he wasn't the first person I ever really felt connected to. I ripped him apart in my mind, into disjointed pieces. Eyes. Mouth. Hands. Knees. Dick.

But when he walked beside me to the vacant lot, I thought I could see the whole of him. Like I was looking at a picture of him, taken at a great distance. I didn't throw away any of my drawings of him. I hadn't looked at them in a while, but I didn't throw them away either. Maybe I knew I'd go back to him.

I pretended I didn't see him wipe his eyes on his sleeve or take those eyes and rake them over my body like a gust of wind. The hickeys had healed. It was like nothing had ever happened. I crossed my arms over my chest. I should have put on a shirt.

It was chilly. The grass in the lot shimmered with dew. There was no one else around so early.

I sat down on an abandoned bench seat from a passenger van. Mark sat next to me. We weren't touching at first, but he spread his legs wider until his knee bumped mine. I couldn't move.

"So?" He said, like he was expecting me to lead this conversation, as though I had ever controlled anything between us.

"So what?"

"I don't want to keep guessin'. It's eatin' me up inside. Why are you mad?" Was he serious?

I didn't want to say it, so I just shrugged.

"Baby," he said softly. "I can't stand you being mad at me. Just tell me, so we can go back to what we was like before." He started caressing my hair and my face with his left hand, and put his right one on my thigh. I slunked down on the bench so we wouldn't be seen from the street.

I blinked, and hard. Why did I always have to be such a fucking girl? "You miss having someone to get off with and do your homework for you." I wished my voice was firm and indigent, but it wasn't. It was small and desperate. I wanted him to love me back, but the distance made it clear; I was just warm and willing, no better than the cheap broads I used to scorn.

"It ain't like that." - I wanted to believe him. - "I like foolin' around with you, I won't lie. But it ain't just that." His hand on my leg kneaded.

If we weren't outside, I'd have laid back and let him have me, however he wanted. I inched away from his hands and pulled my knees up to my chest.

"Why you got to spread the 'stay gold' thing around like that?"

"Would you believe I was tryin' to be romantic?"

His face seemed open, but I still couldn't read it. I didn't understand.

"The drugs, the sass - were you plannin' on that? Is that why you got it, so I'd take some? 'Cause you wanted to - do that?"

He shook his head. "I'm gonna start sellin'. I met a guy on the Ribbon, and it sounds like I'll be makin' some good money. He said I should try it out with my girl, that it would heighten things. I only ever wanted you to feel good."

"You're gonna push?" I asked, for some reason surprised.

He told me about everything he was getting involved in. I knew, even at fourteen, it was a terrible idea. I'd seen movies. I'd read books.

"That sounds like a scam, Mark. What if you can't sell enough of it? How are you ever gonna to pay him back?" I thought of Two-Bit's mom and her garage filled with Holiday Magic cosmetics.

He smiled, and it was almost like old times. "I missed the way you worry. It's almost like having a conscience or common sense or somethin'."

"Mark, it's not funny. What happens if you can't pay him back?"

"Don't be bugged. I already found a few spots to sell. I found this bar. You're gonna love it."

I knew I shouldn't get involved. If I used my head, I'd have left him in the lot right then and walked home. But I think it's well established I ain't ever used my head.

I turn toward him. I had so much I wanted to say to him, but they were all things that were too hard to say. I took a deep breath, before speaking quietly. "I - I didn't want to. I told you I didn't want to."

"No, you didn't."

I shook my head, because I knew the truth. But I also knew it was never about what I wanted with him, was it? Even the gifts he gave me were all just a way to get what he wanted. It was about him doing exactly what he wanted, whenever he wanted, everyone else be damned. I should have seen it long ago. He was beautiful, but unkind. Selfish and deviant, everything I had read about homosexuals. "I'm not like you. I'm not a queer."

He rolled his eyes, and ignored me. "Maybe I got a little carried away, but you liked it just as much as me. That was obvious."

My nails were too short to bite. I gnawed at the tip of my thumb. "You hurt me."

"I figured that part out. It's too dry there next time we fu-"

" _Mark!_ " I glanced frantically around the street. It was still empty.

"Hey," he reached for my face again, and I didn't pull away. His hand felt cold on my cheek. His thumb stroked lightly. I wanted this so badly. I had for weeks. I wanted Mark or just some comfort or both. I leaned in. "I'm sorry you got hurt."

I laughed without meaning to. It was incredulous and cruel. Maybe we were more alike now then we'd ever been.

Maybe the sleeping pill was wearing off, because the anger rose in me, making everything vivid and sharp. I hadn't just got hurt, like I fell down the stairs or something.

"I wouldn't put out, so you tricked me into takin' drugs, and then you held me down and fucked me on my parents grave." It was insane. He was insane. I could see it, now.

He rolled his eyes again, and I remembered how much I loathed him.

I stood up to go home. I didn't want to be anywhere near him.

"Where'dya think your goin'?" He stood up. "We're in the middle of a conversation."

"Mark - I just can't - I'm done."

"Sit back down, and talk to me right now." He grabbed my wrist so tight, I could barely rip out of it. But Dad taught me how to fight as soon as I learned to walk, and I pulled through the weakest part of his grip, where his finger tips touched his thumb.

"You don't tell me what to do!"

I was going to walk away, but he kept rushing at me.

"If you're mad at me, then fuckin' hit me like a man."

"I don't want to."

He pushed me, "Why not, faggot?"

"I'm not gonna fight you, Mark."

"Too much of a pansy, that it?" - _push_ \- "You don't like fights?" - _push_ \- "Ain't that the way it's always been? Big Shane and his sons ran this place, and then there was you. People thought you was a girl with your pretty long hair for a long time." - _push_ \- "You're just gonna walk off, write a fuckin' poem about it?"

I wasn't gonna take the bait, but then I did anyway.

I had to duck his fist and, for once, I punched back. I was so fucking angry, my breathing went shallow and jagged. I didn't normally hit anyone out of anger, but that morning I did.

And we went at it in the vacant lot. Circling each other and swinging, but then it was like my brain stopped filming. Of all the things it could choose not to remember, that fight was it. I came back to myself and looked down at my hands that had never looked so much like my father's, as the neighbors all made their way out of their houses to see the spectacle. I stood across from Mark, who looked _bad._ Had I done that? I felt sick. _We should stop,_ I thought. _I don't want to be like this._

"Ponyboy!" I looked over past Mark to see Darry standing at the edge of the lot, with a cup of coffee steaming in the air. Next to him were Soda and Steve. They wouldn't step in; Mark was about the same size as me. It was a fair fight. "Careful with your head!" I wasn't supposed to get anymore concussions, right. I kept forgetting - doctor's orders.

Mark yelled back over his shoulder. "Don't worry, big guy, I ain't gonna do nothin' to mess up that pretty face."

I lunged at him. We went rolling like a somersault. I popped back up, and he had to scramble.

I was getting in more blows, but Mark was stronger than he looked and the fight lasted longer than you might think. He could stand his ground and take a hit, like nobody's business.

He got me good once, and I crashed into the hard ground, before I managed to kick out his shin. He swore as he stumbled back and down.

I stood up and over him. His brow was furrowed. You could tell he was smarting something awful.

I kicked him one last time in the stomach, then I extended my hand. "Come on," I said and nodded toward our house. "I'm done."

He grabbed my hand and turned his face to the side to spit out blood. "You get it out of your system, buddy?"

I pulled him up.

He had a bounce in his step and a grin on his bloodied face. "We're done fightin'."

I nodded, trying to make sense of things.

"What's so important you have to duke it out so early?" Steve seemed real annoyed, as we approached.

Mark just grinned. "Oh, you know, Pony's just sensitive."

"Yeah, but I can kick your ass."

He winked at me, and I knew that he didn't feel bad about what he had done. He just felt bad that I was mad. It was the thing about Mark that scared me the most. How he could irrevocably change me and feel no remorse.

But we fought and now we were square.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Chapter Eight**

"You just gotta feel the car," Mark said.

We were stalled for about the six hundred and fifty-six millionth time on a hill. The car started to roll back. I stomped on the brakes, then Mark pulled the handbrake. We jerked forward. He put his hand over mine on the gearstick. The bruises on our knuckles were fading to yellow and brown, like the tips of an overwatered plant. A large cut on one of mine was still healing, so Darry had to superglue it every night. The skin pulled around it, as I gripped the steering wheel. I probably should have gotten stitches.

"Now, just let off the clutch and press the gas."

Mark taught me how to drive in stolen cars, after we got back together. He was done with his community service. You might think his arrest would be a deterrent, but if you thought that you'd be giving us too much credit. We were a little more careful though, not driving as fast. He was still on probation.

"Quit riding the brakes."

"I'm not." I was.

Soda had let me drive a little bit before, but only in an empty parking lot. I wasn't very good at it. There was a lot to keep track of. I didn't think I could manage all the pedals and gears and look at the mirrors and speedometer and the tachometer all at once. My brain just isn't good at that sort of thing. And I was terrified of committing accidental manslaughter. Mark thought this fear was funny, but it really did make me nervous. Truthfully, I didn't want to learn to drive as much as Mark wanted to teach me to drive. He was trying hard to be nice since we started hanging out again.

"You can pull over, then I'll drive."

I did. Eager to be out of the driver seat, the car started rolling back again.

"Pony, you're not parked!" He laughed and then crawled past me, and in a few frenzied moments got the car to still.

"...Sorry."

"Naw, that was pretty good for a beginner." - I knew he was just being nice. - "Why don't we go back to my house for a while?"

What he really meant was he wanted to have sex. I knew that since we had done it, he'd want to do it all the time. Maybe that was why I was so reluctant the first time. I didn't mind so much now. It was odd. I wasn't nervous or embarrassed about it anymore. Sometimes it was like I wasn't even there. He told me I'd get used to it, and I did. Besides, it wasn't that bad since he started using Vaseline. And I always got high first. That was the big perk of going with a pusher. He was only selling pills at this point but he could get me whatever he wanted to. He knew people.

There were plenty of drawbacks of seeing a pusher, but I didn't know them yet.

"Hey, you know Buck Merril, right?" he asked, stretching his neck as he checked his blindspot before pulling a u-turn.

I nodded. I guess I knew people too. "Why?" I asked, apprehensive. I knew what went on at Buck's, and I didn't want to get involved in it.

"I thought it might be a good place to push." He was on a deadline. Mark was just starting out then, and it wasn't swinging for him yet. He didn't seem all that worried though. I didn't know too much about that end of things. But I did my best to help him. (I always thought of it as me helping Mark. I never thought I was pushing too, but I guess I was. I'll get to that later.)

I chose my words carefully, so he wouldn't think I was trying to tell him what to do. I had a vague awareness that I had learned to manipulate Mark, the manipulator. I was sorry, but it was how it was. "It's mostly speed freaks that hang around there, and they got doctors and bikers to get it from."

Speed freaks shoot up meth. I thought of the raucous laughter at Buck's, the way people brandished heaters like they were just kids playing pirates with tree branches. I didn't like it there at all. They were beyond taking a couple of pills, or dropping acid, or even shooting up heroin.

Mark didn't know what he was getting into. He was a rough boy, but his heedlessness could make him sort of naive. I thought injectable drugs crossed a line that I didn't want Mark to. People _die_ doing that stuff. I couldn't live with being a part of that. Of course, Mark wouldn't live with anything. I would. I had to live with everything bad he ever did. Somewhere along the way, I started being responsible for his actions. I didn't want to, but somebody had to be. And it couldn't be him. It was just the way he was made. You can't help how you're made. I accepted that.

I tried to come up with a new place for him to sell on the way to his house, but he was pushing hallucinogens, and those were for people with more money than I knew. Rich hippies, Socs. I'd have been more help if he was pushing narcotics. He had been given more pills than he could unload, and I had taken a fair amount of them that day, which he reminded me he had to pay back. We needed to figure something out.

We got to his house, like we used to, though it didn't exactly go back to like it was before. It couldn't, because I now knew that when Mark placated me, it was an allowance. If he really wanted something, he'd just take it. That's why I never said no to him again. About anything. I knew he didn't actually have to listen. I figured it was better to go along with things and not be in a situation where my 'no' might be ignored. I didn't want to get hurt like that ever again.

But he was being sweet to me now, saying he was so glad to have me back, saying how good I felt, that I was made for this, made for him. It was corny but I liked it. When he finished, he told me he loved me, and I chose to believe him.

I missed being held like this. I felt stupid for making a big deal out of everything. Taking so much sass that day must have confused my perception of time, because it seemed like that first time he had sex with me went on for a long time, but I knew Mark's body. It couldn't have taken more than five minutes. Five minutes was generous, and probably even less, because he had been pretty excited. Five minutes was nothing. We had so many wonderful five minutes together, before and after. It was stupid to be upset over a bad less-than-five minutes. Not to mention, I was miserable when I wasn't with Mark. It was a relief to be back with him. He was the first person to know every part of me, the only one to know all my secrets. I didn't think I'd be able to find that with anyone else.

"You get off work at eight tomorrow?"

"Yeah." His hair was grown out long enough for me to run my fingers through it. I could have done it all day.

"We got places to go, people to see."

"Buck's?" I didn't know if we should go, but especially not on a Friday. Too much chance I'd run into someone who'd tell Darry or Soda.

"No, it's a surprise." I wasn't sure I wanted to be surprised by Mark. He kissed my forehead. "You'll like it, promise."

* * *

Library clerk was a great summer job. There was air conditioning, and I got to read while I was there. I mostly had to restock books, things like that, and help Miss Doris with odd tasks. So I was reading more than I ever have, which is saying something, and a larger variety of books. I told you there were more books in the new library than anywhere else. Miss Doris read a lot too and she always recommended good ones.

Even though the Central Library was a bit of a tourist attraction and had a steady crowd, there were still a lot time I spent reading and waiting for someone who wanted to check out. Not many people dig books the way I do, even at the library.

The library also had subscriptions to literary magazines, like Mr. Syme had been published in. They were kept in the "Newspapers, Magazines, & Journals" room. I read through a bi-annual publication and found the Erwin T. Speicher poetry contest. It was in that room I decided, with the audacity that might only exist when you're a teenager, that my poetry was just as good, if not better than some of the selected poems from last year. I don't know why I was so confident. I think my parents may have emboldened me too much.

First prize got two hundred dollars, second got a hundred, and third got seventy-five. The ten honorable mentions each got twenty-five bucks, which was a lot of money. (I was making a dollar an hour, as a library clerk, at the time.) Some of the poems weren't very good. I figured maybe twenty people submitted poems, and if they chose the top thirteen, I had a shot at an honorable mention. I was going to be published like Mr. Syme. I copied down the submission directions and decided I'd choose my best poem when I got home, or at least the poem that seemed the most like what they would pick to publish. It would be about Mark, because everything I wrote was about Mark back then. Even my final composition for English, which was about "A Good Man is Hard to Find," was really about Mark. But I didn't tell Mark about the contest.

It was getting late and the only people left in the library were a bunch of noisy black-haired children. They came for Story Time and normally stayed pretty close to closing. Unlike most of the regulars, they weren't good at putting the books they didn't borrow back on the right spot on the shelf. The biggest kid hauled over twelve books and sat them on the front desk. I put down the copy of _In Cold Blood_ I was reading.

"Find everything alright?" I asked.

"No, but that's okay, I wasn't looking for anything."

He was a weird kid, but I nodded.

One of the little ones popped up to put her chin on the desk. "Sissy's gonna come home from Aunt Marion's, Pony."

I didn't know this little girl or Sissy or Aunt Marion. But she seemed excited about it, so I smiled and said, "Tuff enough."

She smiled back so big, I could see all the gaps where she was missing teeth. "Yeah! She's out of money!"

"Oh," I said somewhat perplexed. "That's good?"

They passed by Mark as they left and stopped and talked, before he made his way over to me.

"They live in my neighborhood, in that big yellow house on East Haskell, the one where the lawn is always kept up, but they're okay." Leaning over the desk, he asked, "You ready?"

"I still got another twenty minutes."

"That's okay. I'll wait, maybe read or something. Ya'll got any of those Dick and Jane books? I'm on the edge of my seat to find out what they're all runnin' from."

* * *

The sun was getting low and Mark wouldn't tell me where we were going.

It was about a mile from the library, when he stopped in front of a bar that had people spilling out and a couple of drunks fighting in the road, holding up traffic. We didn't go in that bar, though. He led me through the alley and to the back, where there was a door down some steps. You couldn't see any light or hear anything from the other side of it. Then Mark opened it and gave me nudge. It was even darker when we stepped inside than it was on the street, with just one lamp hanging from the ceiling that made a circle of light at the center of the room. There was a bar and booths along the walls, covered in shadows. There were people sitting in some of them. Ruckus from the bar upstairs filtered in through the ceiling. It was pretty quiet down there, though.

It looked like a regular dive bar at first, then I noticed the bartender, who looked remarkably like John Wayne, if you see past her sex and race. Mark thought so, too, when I brought it up later. She was even wearing a cowboy hat and neckerchief, but it was mostly how she held herself. I had never seen a woman like her, but did my best not to stare.

She looked up when we walked in. "You're back," she said to Mark. She was wiping a dirty glass with a dirty rag over a galvanized metal tub filled with dingy water. There wasn't a tap behind the bar, it was gross. She looked at my face. "The alcohol kills the germs, anyway, chicken. How old are you?" She had a real twangy accent.

"Fifteen." I rounded up. I don't know why. I thought it sounded better right then, though fifteen was still underage. Then I felt guilty and added, "in a month."

"Jack, this Ponyboy. We'll take some hooch," Mark said with a grin and a wink, which evidently did not work on this woman.

She gave us two cokes. "Ponyboy, huh?" She knew who I was already.

"Yes, ma'am."

Mark sat on a bar stool, but everything looked sticky so I stayed standing. I leaned over to whisper to Mark, but the woman - Jack - said, "Keep yer distance yet."

I pulled back. "What is this place?"

"I found the queers!" His voice was lowered but his eyebrows were up and excited.

I glanced around the bar, squinting through the darkness to see the other patrons. Men were sitting with men and women with women, each pair with appropriate amounts of space between them. They looked normal to me. No one but Jack was dressed too wild (not in Tulsa, not at the time), but a lot of women were wearing pants. But the thing that made a beautiful ache bloom in my chest was the way they were sitting. There were women sitting with their ankles over their knees, and men with their legs crossed. It wasn't everyone, but it was more than a few.

I had to put my hands in my pockets. They were shaking. Up until this point in my life, I didn't think there could be much more than ten homosexuals in the whole state, but there were twelve right here in this bar.

Jack kept a watchful eye on the door, as more and more queers came in, but she was talking to me and Mark. I think she might have been trying to put me at ease. I think I must have seemed pretty skittish. Mark was relaxed, of course.

She told us about how this bar had been there for nearly ten years, and had only been raided a few times, because Jack took precautions and they were quiet. It used to just be for women, but Jack took pity on the male homosexuals after their tap room got shut down last year, and they brought over a jukebox that mostly played things like Dusty Springfield and Martha Reeves, because they were for everyone. That's how she put it, though personally, it wasn't the sort of music I'd be caught dead listening too. I didn't know any guy who would. That is, until now. But no one was allowed to dance until later in the night.

"I lock the door at 9:30 sharp, so that's when the real excitement will start. People are gonna start funneling in pretty soon. You can stay, Mark. But glory, you boys stick together. Don't let your friend stray too far from you, not with that face. "

I was surprised when she went to lock the door, because she was so small. She stood on a crate while she tended the bar - she couldn't have been taller than 5'2. But she shouldered her way through the gathered crowd with little effort. There might have been thirty to fifty people there that night, but it wasn't a huge space.

And then the excitement did start.

It was getting louder and rowdier, as it got later and people drank more, though it wasn't half as wild as the bars Dad used to hang out in. Everyone was still hiding. But there were a few men who I would later learn to call screamers. Flamboyant men, who were so repressed in most of their lives that when they finally got a chance to let loose, they _screeched._ There was a whole language to be learned. I was a chicken - not chicken like coward, just young - there were chickenhawks, who I apparently needed to be weary of, but so far everyone had been kind. Some guy even snuck us rum to put into our cokes, repeatedly topping off our glasses. Mark and I could save a lot of money doing our boozing here, I thought. I was getting a little tipsy.

Mark and me were a novelty, being so young. And me being well known. And Mark being magnetic. He was talking to people, getting their life stories. I mostly stayed quiet. It was overwhelming, seeing all these people. Couples like me and Mark.

I marveled at how Mark could be so casual, while my entire world was rapidly expanding. I sat next to him completely enraptured by all our queer silhouettes, which were cast as characters in a bawdy vaudevillian act across the wall. Jack had to keep the light low, but it was enough.

And there was another thing - there were even a few interracial couples, which you didn't see too much of then. It was one of the least segregated spaces I'd ever seen before. I supposed people like me, who have to meet their kin in the shadows, might get to meet people from other parts of town. We all had this other commonality. I thought about that a lot. I'm not saying it was perfect (Is anything?), but it was better than anywhere else I'd ever been.

Mark saw it, but he put it differently. "All these perverts, lookin' past their differences to get laid," he said. "Really makes you think."

Everyone in this bar shared this secret with me. Probably the biggest secret we all had. I guess that's why no one seemed to mind much my hanging around. They had all been lonely, confused kids. There were bits of me in these people. I'd spent my life modulating my voice and mannerisms. Something about the way I talked that I never liked, something that kept me from speaking, I picked up on this quality in the cadence of some of voices of the men here. And maybe for the first time in my life, I could picture myself as a grownup.

Mark left me. He said he had to take care of something. I didn't know. I felt lost without him, so I wandered around with both our drinks in my hands, until I bumped into a man and the drinks sloshed out over my wrists and on the front of his shirt.

"Sorry, mist- Mr. Syme!" I gripped the glasses hard. My mouth fell open like a cartoon, all I could think tp say was, "You're like me."

"You can't be here," he said but he didn't do nothing but stare.

We were still frozen in a stand-off, when Mark grabbed my hips from behind and stuck his chin on my shoulder.

"Oh hey, it's that teacher you're always talking about."

I felt my face heat up. I wasn't _always_ talking about him.

But I guess Mark didn't find it that noteworthy, because he casually plucked one of the glasses from my hand and said, "Come on, you got to see what's happenin' in the bathroom."

"No!" Mr. Syme reached out and gripped my forearm with his free hand, and I noticed for the first time he had a glass of liquor in his other. His eyes were a little bloodshot. He was half-crocked. And though I've been around my share of drunk people all my life, this shocked me. Maybe because he was a teacher. I don't know. He looked down at where he had my arm, dropped it like he'd been burned.

"Pony, you can't be here," he repeated.

A short guy joined his side. "Pete-Oh, I heard we had some fresh meat tonight," he said when he saw Mark and me.

"He's my student, Sam." - This sent Sam into a fit of what could only be described as giggles. He was fully stoned. - "And he needs to leave."

"Don't be such a wet blanket, Petey."

"Does Jack know you're here? Where's Jack? Jacqueline!"

He found Jack and they argued like Mark and me weren't right there. I was kinda sore that Mr. Syme wanted me to leave.

"It's this or they'll go to Mohawk Park. You want that one strollin' Bird Creek?"

Mohawk Park wasn't that far from my house, and I knew from the glint in Mark's eyes we'd be going there soon. I almost wished Jack hadn't mentioned it, but I was curious too. Were there more homosexuals there?

"You'll explain this to Doris, then, Jack?" Mr. Syme's tone was clipped.

My head snapped around at that. _Miss Doris?_

"And you boys realize how important it is that no one finds out about this place?"

I nodded. I wasn't an idiot.

"Then it's settled," Sam proclaimed with a happy clap. "The kids are staying!"

"But you're not drinking that." Mr. Syme took our glasses, which were obviously more rum than coke at this point.

I felt pretty dizzy, anyway, but Mark opened his mouth to say something smart. Sam cut him off, "Be a good boy, now, and listen to your teacher."

"Petey ain't my teacher. I'm take remedial English with Miss Roberts. He only teaches the smart kids."

Sam ignored him and shook his head. "Sit with us!"

Mark and I sat in a booth across from them. Mr. Syme seemed uncomfortable at first, but then he drank the rest of my drink and seemed fine.

"Fourteen! You're a baby. That's real cute." - I stiffen instinctively at Sam calling me cute. - "I didn't have anyone to kiss until I was in my thirties. You're lucky to figure it out so young."

I hadn't considered that, but I guess he was right.

"I never -" I started, but didn't really know what I wanted to say. "I didn't know places like this existed."

"If you think this is good, you ought to take a trip down to Oklahoma City. That scene will blow your mind, honey." I liked it when Mr. Syme called me honey. I don't know why, but I knew it was a good thing I had stopped drinking.

"Among other things," Sam muttered, and Mr. Syme said jovially, "Shut the hell up, Sam."

"It's not as good since the Mayflower got burnt down. Too many cops. Ya'll ought to see a really city someday - San Francisco or New York."

We talked with them until we had to leave. I was supposed to be home by midnight. I wanted to ask if they were _together_. I wasn't sure. Did they have sex? I wondered who did what. I imagined it, Mr. Syme's face sweaty and flushed as it was now, him on top -I thought he should be on top - moving … I scooted so my chest hit the table. I had to stop thinking like that. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I tried to just listen and not think.

"I knew you'd love it. Aren't you glad I brought you here?" Mark asked on our way out, with his hand on the back of my neck in a way that was intimate and public.

I nodded, and he kissed me. I felt his grin against my lips. Someone whistled.

I loved it. I loved him.

We stumbled up and onto the street at about 11:30, which gave me only half-an-hour to sober up enough and not get into trouble. It was cutting it close, but I didn't care. Under the flashing neon signs of downtown, we were illuminated. I don't know if I had ever felt so happy. I jumped on Mark's back, nearly knocking him over.

"I wish it was like that everywhere all the time," I said. We never talked about what it meant to be a homosexual, because it didn't mean much to Mark. It did to me though. It meant a lot.

"You're telling me. I get to sleep with the best looking guy in school whenever I want," - Feeling pleased, I ducked my head, though I knew it wasn't true. The best looking guy in school was named Bill Turner. He was in the grade above us, and I had never spoken to him. I knew better than to tell Mark this, even though it was an objective fact. Mark was still my favorite, though. - "and I can't brag to nobody about it. What I wouldn't give to dig the look on Angela Shepard's face, if she knew."

Mark had something against Angie lately. I guess it was just loyalty, because she and Douglas broke up. I kept running into her, and she still seemed nice to me.

After we got a little aways from downtown, Mark took out a wad of cash from his pocket and started counting. He had a lot more than he started the night with.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Chapter Nine**

It was one of those summers that seemed endless. Hot, muggy, and fuzzy around the edges. Mark was prowling around to find new people to sell to, and I went along for the ride. He was good at making connections, slinking into a room and maneuvering around, constantly reorienting himself to get what he wanted. But selling drugs was harder than he originally thought, not that he'd ever cop to it.

We had gone all over trying to push. I took Mark to the Soc parties I kept getting invited to. That's where we had the most success. We tried other places too. We went out to the Black suburbs, but the guys out in Brumly can't afford two bucks for a pill, so that was a bust. Jack's was still working out for Mark. We went there so much that summer. I'd meet Mark there after I got done at the library. Sometimes I'd get there first and sit quietly on a barstool and draw portraits of the patrons. They were beautiful.

We went to Mohawk Park a couple weeks after we'd first gone to Jack's.

I got spooked there. At first, we couldn't find anything sordid. No homosexuals or even hippies, like at the city park. It wasn't exactly a cool hang out. It was mostly families with kids and old people with binoculars, on the trails that ran along Bird Creek. I got to explain to you that Mohawk Park is huge. It had the zoo, a nature center, a golf course, and a rodeo arena. We split up to cover more ground.

I was ready to call it and try to find Mark, but I got distracted on Bird Creek Bridge looking out over the babbling murky water. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man who looked vaguely familiar. His brown eyes so dark they were nearly black. I shouldn't have met his gaze, I knew that at the time. But there was a pull at my chest as I tried to place him. He was handsome, with olive skin and black hair. Older than my dad. He looked like he had wandered over from the golf course. He probably had. His wine-colored striped polo shirt matched his trousers.

He didn't say anything, as he approached. He just placed his hand next to mine on the railing, with a crisp five dollar bill rolled between two fingers like a cigarette.

I looked up at him, but he turned away from me, pretending to stare at the creek. The letters "A.S." were monogrammed on his short sleeve.

He jerked his head toward the woods.

Mouth dry, I said, "No."

"Ten, then." He had a confident way about him, like he was used to getting what he wanted, but he faltered as he looked around the bridge. "You'll come to my car." It wasn't a question.

I took off at a dead run. It wasn't that scary. It wasn't like he did anything. But I was still scared.

"Why didn't you go with him?" Mark asked, when I found him and told him about the man.

I fumbled for a weed with sweaty hands. "I think he wanted to do somethin'."

"No shit. No one's going to give you ten dollars to go for a walk."

"Would you? Have gone with him, I mean?" I glanced around the park, ready to book it.

"Yeah, if I didn't have to do anything. Bet you could've just let him jerk you off, it's a win-win." I knew he was annoyed, because I'd gotten good at reading his moods. It'd been building for days. We were both tensed up, he needed to come up with a hundred dollars by the end of the month for the guy he got his supply from.

"What if he wanted to do more? Would you be okay with that?"

There was a cascade of cross vine blossoms on the side of the elm tree behind Mark. They were beginning to wilt, but the vines would last long after the flowers fell to the forest floor. The tendrils would remain deciduous, insidiously entwined with the bark, until winter came and they decayed. All vining plants wreak havoc on their hosts, even the pretty ones.

"Well, I'd never let anyone fuck me." - I thought that was insulting, but I wasn't about to tell him so - "But you might as well. We need the money."

 _We?_ I wasn't the one who agreed to some guy on the Ribbon to push. I told him I thought it was a bad idea from the start.

He got mad that day, and I'd stopped being surprised by his outbursts.

My hand looked distorted and discolored, by the time I got home. Deep plum bruises crept down from the tip of my crooked pinky to the bottom of my wrist. Darry made a big deal out of it.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked, as he pressed a box of frozen peas to the side of my hand to bring down the swelling. "Don't lead with your smallest knuckle and keep your wrist straight - up and through."

That bothered me, because I knew how to throw a punch. Maybe I wasn't tough like my brothers, but I could still fight like one. Besides, I hadn't been punching at all, when I heard the snap. But it hurt too much to try to argue. Wincing, I replied, "I know."

"If you keep getting busted up like this, the people from the state are gonna think I beat you. Do you think we need to take him to the hospital, Soda?"

I felt bad, because the last thing we needed was another medical bill. And it was late; Darry had already put in a long day. He didn't need to spend the night in the emergency room with me.

He did, though. I'd get the cast off in six weeks, but it would always make itself known before a storm.

* * *

Two weeks and three days past, and I hadn't seen Mark. He was avoiding me after the park. Maybe because he was still angry with me. Or maybe because he knew it would make me want him more. Make me want to do things that would get him to come back and stick around. I figured if I came up with the money, he couldn't stay mad at me and he wouldn't be so stressed, which is why I had sixty-eight dollars under the hood of my typewriter and an old snuff tin with nine leftover pills. Sometimes it beat like a tell-tale heart while I insisted I was still sane. Other times, I tried not to let it bother me and just slept, which was what I was trying to do that morning. But Soda didn't let me.

He pounced on the bed. "Wake up, Ponyboy! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!"

I rolled onto my stomach, as Soda dug his fingers into my side, driving me to the head of the bed. I scrunched up my body to get away from the assault. Darry's footfalls were as heavy and steady as he is. He got my other side and I couldn't escape, but my giggles did. I can't help that I'm ticklish.

Palm out, I shot up my arm in surrender. "Okay, okay! I'm up." Then I wacked Soda on the side with my heavy plaster cast, for good measure. It wasn't the best thing for a broken wrist, but I don't use my head.

Darry forced a knuckle between two of my ribs, and I yelped. You better believe that hurts.

"Don't do that, it won't heal if you don't leave it be," he said. "Your breakfast is gettin' cold."

I glared at him. A long time ago, when I was four and Darry was ten, he tickled me in the hallway until I pissed myself. I hadn't forgotten. I'll never forget. And today was my birthday. I'd eat cold eggs, if I wanted to.

Soda threw a similar glare at me so overdone I had to grin. "Come on, hurry up and eat. We got to drop Darry off at work, before we hit the town."

"We don't got to go anywhere special."

"What, can't fit me into your busy schedule? You got to _go to the library_?" Soda teased. Going to the library had become my favorite excuse, even when I didn't have to work. I knew that was the last place the gang might go and see I wasn't there, the library.

I shook my head. Truth was, I was hoping Mark would turn up. I was nervous. I wanted to be here if he came looking for me.

"Gosh, but when's the last time we've goofed around?"

That sold me, you just couldn't say no to Soda. I got out of bed to eat.

My eggs weren't cold, they were just the way I liked them. When we were little, Mom would split up the eggs for me and Soda, because I only liked the whites and he liked the yokes. I used to be a picky eater, but I had to get over it.

We were going to spend my birthday together, just me and Soda. Darry had to work, but Soda traded shifts with Steve. I didn't ask him to. But Soda seemed excited. He always tried hard to make things fun for me, make it seem like we were still a real family, and not just three boys who lived in the same house. It was Soda who would always get out the Christmas decorations and insisted on marking our heights on the wall like Dad used to. And it was like Dad, the way he hopped on the counter started reminiscing.

"I remember the day you were born."

Darry shoved him onto the floor. "No, you don't. You was two."

Soda made a face like he still was. "Uh-huh. It was the best day of my life."

"Now I know you don't remember. All these ladies came over and we went out chopping wood with Dad, but we could still hear Mom screaming from inside. It was terrifying. You remember the log house, Pony?" Darry asked, running water into the sink so the dishes could soak. No one would have time to do them before we left.

I shook my head but said, "Kinda." Truthfully, I didn't know if I actually remembered anything from before we moved to Tulsa, or if my memories were reconstructed from stories I'd been told. I was real young then.

My memories were all at this house. Me and Soda pretending to be dogs, crawling around and lapping water out of a bowl on the floor. We'd played cowboys and house, and once ripped off the bark of the white ash tree in the backyard, which made Mom mad. We were trying to make maple syrup. You can't get syrup out of an ash tree, but we didn't know that when we were seven and ten. I trusted everything Soda said, so I believed him when he told me we could.

"Can't believe you're fifteen. Pretty soon we're gonna be the same age," Soda continued, as he looked for his tennis shoes.

Darry tossed him one. "I'd check your math on that, little buddy."

Soda rolled his eyes. "No, I mean, when he's seventeen and I'm nineteen. Or when I'm twenty-seven and you're thirty and Pony's twenty-four. It'll be like we're all the same age, you dig? We'll probably have wives and kids by then. "

I pushed my eggs around on my plate. I was sorry that I lied to Soda all the time and sorry that I planned to lie to him the rest of our lives. And I was sorry I'd never do those things with him and Darry. It was a lonely feeling. It made even talking to them about normal things hard sometimes.

"What are you gonna name your kids?" I asked, to be saying something.

"My oldest is going to be Sodapop. Works for a boy or a girl."

"But then what will you be?" I forked a bite of cake, before standing up to get ready.

"Well, maybe Patrick, or better I'll push you over and take your name, Darry."

"You try it, little man, and we'll see what happens." Darry said, as he got out his wallet and handed me three bucks. "Happy birthday, Pony."

After we dropped Darry off at the site he was working at, Soda asked, "Want to go up to Lakeview? It's Saturday,"

Lakeview Amusement Park had Dollar Days on the weekend, where you could pay a dollar and they'd stamp the back of your hand and you could go on as many rides as you wanted. It was also directly across from Mohawk Park's entrance.

I shook my head a little too emphatically. "No, I don't like it there."

Soda looked at me strangely. "Okay, we can just drive around. Maybe we'll pick-up some girls." He wasn't with Christine anymore. I don't remember what happened, but he hadn't gotten upset about it.

"Sure," I replied.

And that's what we did.

* * *

We were in our Ford with Angela Shepard's tall friend Pam between me and Soda. Angie was in my lap - though I was certain we could squeeze so she wouldn't have to be - and signing my cast with 'Angel' in a lopsided heart. I could smell booze on her breath, even though it was only 11 o'clock.

Angie and Pam had broken from a gaggle of giggling girls to approach us, when we were stopped at a light on the Ribbon. Most girls wore all their hair pin-straight now, and they weren't wearing as much make-up as they used to, a more natural look was in, even for greasy girls. Not Angie though, if it was because she didn't like to follow the crowd or because she was just plain stubborn, I couldn't tell you.

Soda winked at me before inviting them in. Now we were driving to a riverbed bottom party that Pam knew. It should have made me feel grown up that me and Soda could hang out like this, but it didn't feel as good as it used to.

People looked over at us, when we pulled up on the dirt road by the riverbed and climbed out of the truck.

Someone had pulled up their car and turned up the radio with the doors open, and "Psychotic Reaction" blared across the party.

Mark was there. I felt his gaze before I saw him, like I could feel the sun on the back of my neck. I stepped away from Angie, guilt forming in a ball in my stomach. I wasn't sure if it would bother Mark or not. I couldn't always anticipate what might set him off. He didn't want me hanging out with Curly, but when we had ventured up to Mohawk Park, he didn't seem to have the same reservations. Like Mark, the rules were always shifting.

Some things aren't meant to be fixed.

He didn't come over to me, but turned back to say something to Douglas, who looked like he wanted to strangle me. I fought the compulsion to go talk to Mark and make everything okay between us. I'd die if he was angry at me much longer, but I couldn't exactly just go up to him and tell him I had drug money for him. So I waited.

It was a typical party with kids drinking and passing around joints. It wasn't really my scene, but Soda could make anything fun. I liked going to places with him. He was having a good time walking on his hands and doing flips. He kept everyone in stitches clowning around like that. Then he got everyone to sign my cast and sing happy birthday to me, which was a little embarrassing, if you want to know the truth. I'm not like Soda. I wondered what it would be like to be as confident as him. I could never do stuff like that in public. Be the center of things. Soda and Mark were both that way, but where Sodapop's energy was contagious, radiating and spreading out to everyone around him. Mark just sort of had a gravitational pull that drew people in and kept them there.

I sat on one of the boulders at the bottom of the bed to watch, away from the crowd, my paper cup carefully concealed. I didn't want Soda to see, but I was fretting Mark and I needed something to calm my nerves. He didn't so much as look over at me.

Angie stumbled over, tripping over the uneven ground and into me.

"Pony, you caught me!" She hiccuped as I deposited her next to me. "I knew you'd catch me!"

She used to belch the alphabet with her brothers. I thought that was gross, even when I was young. I was grossed out now, by the way she was all over me. I wanted to leave, but I was afraid that if I got up, she'd fall and crack her skull on a rock.

The pressure was building in my chest. I was afraid Mark might come over and see. I was panicked that he hadn't come to see me yet. Her hand was on my neck and then my chest and then lower.

I froze. She squeezed.

"Jesus, Angela, stop it!" I stood up so fast, she fell back and off the boulder. "Shit, shit, are you okay?" I tried to help her up.

"I'm fine." Her words were clipped, and I knew enough to back off. "What's your fucking problem?"

"My problem? Angie, you just - you're being - it ain't even barely noon, and you're reeling."

She looked pointedly at my cup of booze nestled between rocks. "You really think you're better than me?"

"No," I said. "I think you're better than _this_. What happened to you?" I asked, but maybe I meant: _What happened to us? What happened to me?_

She was shaking her head back and forth, and I could imagine her mind filling up with nasty comebacks, but all I could really see was the girl I used to play dress up with, about to stomp her foot, indigent as Curly posted a sign on our fort that said, "No Girls Allowed!"

"You're really full of yourself, Ponyboy." she said. "I don't know what I was thinking. Ain't no Curtis follow anyone around like a love-sick puppy, like you been following Mark Jennings." Then she said something vulgar, but precise.

My blood turned into ice water. "You don't know what you're talking about." She couldn't know.

"He's using you to sell pills to your rich friends."

I looked out over the dry bed. "They aren't my friends - I'm not -"

"Please, I heard about it from Curly's new girl. She's a Soc. Guess that's what you're looking for, too. Some stuck up broad who's lookin' to piss off her old man."

I was keyed up, mad that she was right, wanting to deflect exactly about what. "Well, maybe I want a girl who respects herself and don't throw herself around like - "

She slapped me across the face, like she really was Scarlett O'Hara. I didn't even try to duck; I deserved it.

She was loud and tough, hard like her brothers. I only remembered her crying to get her way, but her blue eyes shone with tears now. She wasn't faking.

I rubbed my cheek, cowed, the sting of the slap still spreading. "It can't get back to my brothers, about the pills."

"You know, I'm no rat."

I bit my lip. "Me and Soda''ll give you a ride home."

"Why would I take a ride with you?"

"Because you're drunk and something bad could happen to you, when you're so out of it."

"Suddenly you care about me?" She looked up at me. Angie had always been real little. I wasn't exactly tall back then, either.

"Angie, it ain't -"

"It's Angel. I'm gonna go find Pam, and we'll get a ride from someone else."

She walked away. I remembered sitting between Curly and Angie in the back of their father's car, dodging as they hit each other, while Mr. Shepard swerved on the road. I don't know if I had ever seen him sober.

I went and got Soda, not looking at anyone else, even Mark. I wanted to go home now, too. As soon as we closed the truck doors, I unleashed it all on Soda. About Angela, how I'd been ignoring her making passes at me for a couple months, how she was mad at me now.

He listened, like he always listened, like what I had to say was important.

"She's cute, is it about Curly? Are ya'll even buddies anymore?"

"It's all different!" I cried passionately. "We used to be friends, and now - And Mark-" I snapped my mouth shut.

"Are you in a fight again?" He looked thoughtful.

I stared out the window.

He glanced over at me. Most of the time he knew what I was saying, even if I didn't. "It's part of growing up. You're not like the Shepards. Or Mark."

 _Wasn't I?_ I wanted to ask, but instead I said, "Steve's been your best friend since second grade, and he's still your buddy."

"That's different. It's Steve."

Maybe it was because it was my birthday, and my birthday always made me nostalgic. I'd never get to be a kid again, I'd never get that back. We'd all just get older, then die. What's it like to have all your firsts behind you? When nothing's new to you anymore. When you get bored of sunsets.

Angie and Curly and me weren't kids anymore. We'd never be kids again. We'd never be friends again, and I felt bad about it.

After a few minutes, Soda said,"You probably don't want to date Tim Shepard's sister, anyway."

We were still a ways away from the main road, when I spotted Angela walking in the ditch.

"Wait, Soda, pull over."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

I cranked the window down and leaned out of it, as Soda slowed the truck down to match her stride.

"Angie - Angel, we'll give you a ride home."

"I don't need anything from you."

She was proud, like Cherry Valance was proud. Her make-up was smeared down her face, but she walked with her back straight. I couldn't help but admire her. And though I was coming to terms with being a queer, I wished I could like her back, like she liked me. I really did.

"Please, Angel," I pleaded softly.

She stopped walking and looked ahead, down the winding road. I guess she weighed her options and didn't want to walk 15 miles in the summer heat.

It was an uncomfortable ride. I think it was getting to be too much for Soda (he'd never been good with silence), because he blurted out, "So what's Tim doing these days? I haven't seen him at Tastee-Freez."

"He got fired - some money was missing from the register and they got all bent out of shape, even though they couldn't prove nothing. He's working at Nina's now."

Nina's was a pizzeria. I pictured Tim Shepard tossing pizza dough in the air. It was kinda funny, picturing a hood like Tim Shepard making pizza.

It went back to silence, until we dropped Angela off. I walked her to the front door. No one was home.

"We didn't have to go anywhere today," I said, as we pulled away from the curb.

"This wasn't what I had in mind, but we had to celebrate."

I was puzzled. "Everyone has a birthday every year." Birthdays were never a big deal in my family. My parents celebrated real milestones.

"Not everyone."

It hit me right in the center of my chest and knocked the wind out of me.

"It's been a shitty couple of years." I straightened up, startled. Soda never talked like that. He always seemed to bounce back into his normal, happy self. "I know it's been hard on you, but you're still swinging. I think that's worth celebrating."

I blinked. I was close to crying. I don't know why. I just was. It was the first time we'd talked like this in a while, though we used to all the time.

Soda reached over and put his hand on the back of my neck, and because we were alone he pulled me towards him and kissed the crown of my head. "Love ya, kid."

* * *

Mark came by the bus stop near the library a few days later, like everything was normal. I wasn't feeling normal, though.

"Where've you been?" I asked, trying to not sound too eager or too angry or too forgiving. I stayed on the bench and stared at the open copy of _Other Voices, Other Rooms_ , perched precariously on my cast. I was rereading. It was the sort of book I had to reread a couple times so I could really get it.

"At the lake." He grabbed my book. "Come on, I don't want to take the bus."

I looked up. He was wearing swim trunks and a t-shirt. Out in public and he was red. Across the bridge of his nose, his arms, his collarbone, his thighs. Burnt.

I followed him, and when I was certain I wouldn't be overheard I said, "I've got money for you. It's at home."

"I knew you'd come through. Let's get a car."

I nodded, and he smiled. I pushed Angela's words down into my subconscious with everything else I'd rather not think about. I thought I could understand why junkies used or why the Randles' bug zapper had insects flying back at it after getting zapped.

Once we found an unlocked Buick, and he pried open the dash, I asked, "Will you teach me how?"

"Sure thing, Curtis. It's real simple, just strip these two wires, and twist them together."

It was simple. I could get it started with just my left hand. A spark of electricity -- of power shot through my fingertips, as I brought the car to life. Was this how Mark felt all the time?

"I got you something for your birthday, baby," he said on the way to my house. He tossed me a baggie of pot. "It's Mex."

It was a full lid, but it had a lot of stems and seeds in it; I'd have to clean it.

"I didn't get you anything." Our birthdays were a week apart. We were both the same age for seven days a year, and I knew it was dumb but I was kind of excited about it.

"Oh, I can think of something I'd like."

* * *

"Anyone home?" I called as we stepped inside. No reply.

We went to my room, and I showed him the money and the remaining pills.

"I knew we could do it, baby."

He'd have enough money to pay back his supplier, with the sixty-eight dollars I got plus whatever he done himself. I didn't ask for specifics.

He plucked a single pill from the tin. "Open wide."

One pill was fine. One pill made me relaxed and happy. I didn't take them too often. Just when we fooled around sometimes, if there wasn't anything else. Mark knew that.

I pushed him onto my bed and got on top. He hissed.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, it's just my sunburn."

I surveyed him, with interest. I don't burn. "Can I see?" I tugged at his shirt with my left hand, which wasn't very effective, so he just took it off himself.

I kissed his forehead, checking his temperature, like my parents used to. His burns were warm to the touch. That surprised me, as I lightly grazed them with the pads of my fingers. The skin on his shoulders was peeling. I scraped my thumbnail gently over it.

"This hurt?" I asked.

"No, but I can think of something more fun than you peeling off my skin," he teased.

I kissed him. I wanted to tangle up with him like fishing line. I started to feel the high rolling over me. We were swallowing each other's laughter and I remembered how much I liked him. He was happy with me, so I was happy. Maybe it was the relief of having enough money or knowing he wasn't mad at me anymore. Or just the pill. I was happy when he took off my shirt. I was happy when he kissed my neck and when he ran his fingers through my hair. I was happy when I dropped to my knees in front of him and brought down the elastic of his swim trunks.

There was a solid line where his pink burn met the pale skin under his waistband. I was transfixed. He tasted of salt and lake water. I had never been to the ocean before, but I thought it might taste like this. This was still one of my favorite things to do. His hands in my hair were getting rough, but I was used to that.

I heard a noise, and tried to turn to look at it, but Mark's fingers were tightening against my scalp. He was close. I felt a splatter on my face, as I pulled back and -

In an instant, I was holding Soda back. He tried to struggle out of my grip, and we tumbled to the floor. Mark got himself back into his trunks and dashed out the door. Soda was swearing blue and green, trying to break free from my grip, but I couldn't let Soda hurt Mark. He had dragged me into the hallway, my knees scraping across the floorboards, but by the time I couldn't hold him back for a second more, Mark was long gone.

He turned on me. "What the hell is going on?"

"I- I-" I stammered looking for the words, any words. A lie, an excuse, anything that could salvage this, but the only words that I thought: _Just say something, faggot!_ His eyes bore into mine, like he was seeing me for the first time. Like I was being seen for the first time. "I don't know." I finished softly, for I did not have the words to say aloud the beautiful, depraved things I felt for Mark.

The waterheater gurgled. It was in the closet next to Darry's bedroom door. I remember the waterheater gurgled.

It was a stranger looking at me then, or maybe I was. I mean it, when I say I'd never seen him so mad. Not at me. Never at me.

He stood abruptly and looked down at me. "Go wash your face." His words shook, but everything seemed oddly still. The sunlight from the window revealed all the dust in the air. "And brush your fucking teeth."


	10. Chapter Ten

**Chapter Ten**

Soda was at the kitchen table with a cigarette and a solemn face. I remembered when we walked into the house for the first time after Mom and Dad died. Nothing would ever be the same again.

My heart was pounding something fierce, as I sat down and reached for the Camels in the center of the table and searched for matches. Without saying nothing, Soda slid a book over to me.

Between my cast and my sweaty, shaky hands, it took a few tries to strike a match. I loved the smell, normally, but while my senses were still warped from the sassafras and Pepsodent stung deep in my nostrils, it made me sick.

Our stained placemats were once a vibrant orange but had faded to a muted coral color and our table top was covered in scratches from doing homework and paying bills. Grooves carved in it like on the corner of the calendar that Darry's work had given us, where we always tried to make dried-out pens write. I too had nothing to say.

We sat across from each other like a detective and a suspect in a crime movie, with an ashtray and a smog of smoke separating us. The silence thickened into anticipation.

Beads of perspiration dripped down my back.

I finished one weed and lit another before I couldn't take it anymore. I said, "Soda," - I didn't think I was going to cry, but my voice sure sounded like I was - "say something."

He exhaled. "You didn't put the pot roast in the oven."

"I'm sorry, I forgot. I'll go do it now." That was my job, Darry had assigned it before we all left in the morning. He'd assembled it last night. I just had to put it in the oven. I forgot, of course.

Soda looked at me for the first time since I entered the kitchen. I don't know what he saw, but I don't think he liked it. "I already started preheating the oven." He fiddled with the frayed edges of his placemat.

"What are you doing home so early?" I asked. I should have propped the bedroom door shut. I should have been listening in case someone came into the house. I never think. Why do I never think?

"Floyd's nephew wanted the hours, so he sent me home." He looked down. "Are you high right now?"

I blinked and sorta nodded. In all the panic I forgot the drugs next to my typewriter on the desk. He must have seen them when I was brushing my teeth.

It didn't seem to me that it mattered much, under the circumstances.

"I'm getting rid of the grass."

"Okay."'

I waited for him to say something about the pills. He didn't. He hadn't seen them, maybe Mark had grabbed them before he fled. I don't remember.

He just stared at the crumbling end of his own cigarette as he tapped it over the ashtray. It looked like a miniscule rockfall - so insignificant, so devastating. "You need to tell me what's going on."

I had never rehearsed justifying this. How could I? There wasn't a reason that would make sense. "I think - I just like Mark."

"No, you don't ... He's got you all mixed-up. He's got you doing drugs with him and -" He didn't finish, too disgusted to say the things I did with Mark aloud. He looked like he was going to puke. "How could you let him do that to you?"

What could I say? That I liked it? That I couldn't stop him? That he overwhelmed me? That he consumed me? Everything I had ever written about him, all the dissonance, so many words and brushstrokes, and the persistent fear that this really was wrong after all.

He ground down his cigarette and shook out another from the pack. "How long has this been going on?"

"Since February. But maybe I was just made like this."

"No," he asserted firmly. "Pony, you're not ... You're confused, is all … It ain't your fault. I mean, after everything that happened, after Mom and Dad, and then Johnny and Dallas. It … It makes sense you're out of sorts. Golly, Ponyboy, you're not you no more. I should have known something was wrong. You been on edge, hiding stuff. There's no girl, is there?"

I shook my head and confessed, "I don't like girls, not like I should."

He shook his head and said nothing.

He got up to put the pot roast in the oven. I look out past him through the kitchen window to mom's garden. I never got around to planting anything in it. I got distracted, and the weeds grew back. What was another year anyway? I figured there'd be time next spring. I always thought there'd be more time. You'd think I'd learn.

I don't remember all we talked about that day. He asked a lot of questions, and I tried to answer him. I didn't tell him everything, because I knew it would look bad, worse than it was. It wasn't that I thought anything was that horrible really, but I knew Soda would think so. I swallowed every reservation I had about Mark and all the things I had desperately wanted to talk over with Soda before. I thought he might kill Mark, if he knew everything. I'm serious. I don't know why I thought that, but I did. And I couldn't let that happen. To either of them.

When the sun subsided, Soda said, "We should make some potatoes." He pulled the chain to turn on the light that hung above the table. It swayed, making his face shadowy and strange, while he peeled potatoes over the sink. I wasn't much help with one arm.

He talked. I listened. Part of me died.

"Steve was right, he's trouble. He's manipulating you. He's a fucking psycho, a goddamn pervert," he said. The sound of knife against the skin on the potato scraped at my nerves, leaving me raw and exposed. "Pony, you need to stop."

Quietly, I asked, "What if I feel about Mark like you felt about Sandy?" I loved him. I'd marry him, if I could. No matter how bad he betrayed me. I don't know, I guess I was holding out hope that Soda would understand that.

"You don't," he snapped. Then his eyes softened, pleading almost. ""You're sick. You can't do that. You can't see him anymore. This ain't like sneaking into the movie house, Pony. This is a serious crime."

I thought about Mr. Syme and all the people at Jack's. I'd been going every week. I'd sit at the bar and draw portraits of the patrons, portraits with enough ambiguity to be safe. Though, I sometimes wanted to draw them more specific, because I don't think I'd ever seen anything as lovely as when Miss Doris came in and leant across the bar to kiss Jack so sweetly on the cheek. I thought about the men at Bird Creek. I thought about money I'd given to Mark. I thought about Mark's edges. I thought about his laughter. I thought about the things I mostly tried not to think about.

How could something be a crime and an illness? How could I be the victim and the patient and the perpetrator?

"I can't just stop." Did he think I hadn't tried?

"You don't understand how serious this is. What if the state finds out? They'll take you away, lock you up in a nuthouse." He blinked and sucked in a quivering sort of breath. "Darry'll be home soon."

There was a painful lump building in my throat. "Are you gonna tell him?"

He shook his head. "We don't got to worry Darry with this," he said, assuring himself more than me, I think. "Yeah, I'll figure it out."

* * *

"You still upset about Soda?" Mark asked three days later when we were finally saw each other. I thought about staying away like Soda said, I really did. But I could no sooner give up oxygen. So when I knew that when Soda couldn't get out of going drag racing with Steve - and it wasn't like Steve was going to strong arm me to come - I'd called Mark right up to meet me at Jack's.

"Would you be okay if Bryon found out?" I asked.

"I got him under control. It'd be fine. Hell, he might already know."

I scoffed. There was no way Douglas knew. I didn't care how well Mark thought he could handle him.

"You said he wasn't going to tell, what does it matter?"

I couldn't explain to Mark that it killed me that Soda was looking at me different. Soda and me hadn't really talked about it again yet, not really. But it was all different. When he wasn't at work, he was at my heels glancing around nervously, like he was going to catch me in the act. All the easy affection we used to share was gone, and that hurt. I don't know how to say this but I never existed before Soda. Mark couldn't understand that though; Bryon wasn't really his brother.

"What's wrong with the chicken?" Jack came over and put a coke in front of me. I must have looked pretty down.

I asked her once why she only ever called me 'chicken' and not Mark. She told me Mark was more of a fox in a henhouse. I'll always wonder if that was fair to him. He was barely sixteen.

"His brother walked in on him blowing me."

Dead silence. Suddenly, people turned to look. No laughter, no teasing like they normally did when it came to me and Mark.

Mr. Syme wasn't there that night, but I wanted him to be.

"Are you safe?" It was a loaded question, and it seemed to me that the whole bar held its breath while I tried to answer.

Eventually I nodded, but voiced a fear I hadn't even fully thought yet. "If he tells Darry," - my voice caught - "I don't know what'll happen."

It was different from before, when I thought Darry hated me. No one was trying to reassure me that it would be fine, that of course my brothers loved me enough and would want to keep me. Everyone in that bar understood that love could be conditional. Over the last couple months, I'd gathered stories about how Mr. Syme never went home to see his family, and whatever had happened to Miss Doris at a hospital up in Vermont when she was in college. It was so bad no one would actually say what it was. There were dozens of stories like that, stories told always with an air defeat, no less hidden then we were in the shadows. There were no good ones. It was never fine after your family found out. The best you could hope for was that they would be so upset it would turn into denial, and they would know you had a "roommate" and never address them directly. Most queers, their families didn't know back then.

I breathed in through my nose and tried to not to cry there in front of everyone, like I tried to hold it in that night when I laid in my bed staring at the ceiling as Soda pushed everything that had built up over the past two years that covered his mattress onto the floor and laid down. I don't like sleeping alone. Maybe I was too soft, I had thought. But getting juiced up would prove him right which was about the last thing I wanted.

The bar was gross, but I laid my head on it anyway.

"Oh honey," Jack said, soothingly. I felt her put her hand on my hair. It was rough and callous from hard work like Mom's, so dry it caught and pulled a little. Jack picked cotton with her mother when she was a girl, she told me once. That was before she married a man who drove a tractor trailer to get out of Alabama. She'd left him in the night years ago, but they were still married, legally speaking. I talked to Jack a lot back then. I always wondered if Mom and her ever met through Miss Doris, but I never asked. I wish I had. And I wish I knew what Mom made of her. It's funny all the things you wonder about once someone's gone.

When we left the bar, I looked over my shoulder, more anxious than normal, which was saying something. I was scared that Sodapop would appear and see us together. I was worried about what Soda would do if he saw Mark again, and if he realized I had no plans to stop seeing him ever.

"I'm gonna go drop off the cash tomorrow, wanna come?"

"Mark, I can't …"

"Cowboy up, you don't need him," Mark declared, as he slung an arm across my shoulders. "You got me."

I shrugged him off. "We got to be more careful."

* * *

A couple days later, Soda woke me up to go to church. Last time I was inside one it was on fire and Johnny died. I wasn't too keen on going, but I couldn't refuse. We both knew what Soda meant by it.

My Sunday best had never been as nice as the rest of the congregation, but I couldn't even get the jacket on. The shoulders were too tight. Nothing fit anymore.

We stayed in the back, like Johnny and I used to. Like Mom and Dad had when I was an acolyte. I had once loved the ceremony, the prayer, the white cotta over red cassock reflected in the chalice, a surreal rendition of me, another me. It always reminded me of Mom's wedding regalia, folded neatly in a box beneath their bed. Was it a sin to be an eight-year-old boy imagining I was a bride?

_"For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops."_ (Luke 12:2-3)

We sat and we stood and we kneeled and we sat.

* * *

Sometime around this time, I got the call. It was before school started, but after Soda found out, I know that much. I was home alone, and it might have been the afternoon. It was the first long-distance call I was ever on. The reception was terrible. I could hardly hear the woman through the hissing in the background. New York sounded as far away as it felt.

I got second place for Erwin T. Speicher Prize. Normally, I'd have found out officially in the mail, but they had a secretary call me because they had questions about my cover letter and my pseudonym.

"That's a hundred dollars, right, ma'am?" I was perplexed. I hadn't thought about the contest since I dropped the envelope in the mailbox two months ago.

"Yes, it is. 'Ponyboy' is this a name you've published under before?"

"It's my real name," I said, with much more hostility than needed toward a secretary who had called me to tell me I won a prize. Maybe I had forgotten how to receive good news, since all I knew how to be for a long time was confused.

"Alright." She hesitated. "I'm sorry, how old are you?"

"Fifteen."

There was nothing but static, I was about to ask if she was still there, but then there was a brief laugh. "No one's going to be happy about this."

"Nobody's happy with anything I do."

"Can I speak to one of your parents?"

"No, they're both dead."

"Are you kidding?"

"That'd be real funny, if I lied about my parents being dead. Just a real lark." I was rude to Nell, then. I don't even know why. I was just tensed up back then. It's a wonder she puts up with me.

We worked out some of the details. She talked me into publishing under P.M. Curtis, and asked a few questions about the things you were supposed to put in a cover letter. I think I just sent in a piece of paper with my name and the title of my poem on it. I didn't know what a cover letter was when I submitted. She told me she'd call back when Darry was home, next Tuesday between three and six. Darry wouldn't get his schedule for the week until Monday, but I was hoping if I told him he could figure out a way to be home then.

Before she hung up, I had one last question. "So y'all liked it - my poem?"

"It was one our most polarizing submissions." I let that sink in. "You placed second. That's a huge honor. This is a very prestigious competition." When she said 'prestigious,' it rhymed more with auspicious than egregious.

"Did you like it?"

"I wasn't on the committee."

"But you read it, Ms. Carmichael?"

"… I did."

"What did you think?"

"I liked it. It was visceral, disturbing."

She didn't get it; it was a love poem.

I stood dumbly in the living room after the call was done, before I went and sat on my bed and thumbed through my drawings, trying to figure out how I was going talk to Darry about the poetry contest lady. I figured I should tell him about the prize money first. But I knew he'd want to read it, and I wasn't eager to have that happen. You can't show a guy like Darry a love poem you wrote. He'd never understand.

I heard the door slam, but didn't bother getting up.

"Ponyboy!"

"In here!"

Soda burst in. I kept drawing and I didn't even think to tell him about the competition.

"I got you something."

"Hmm?"

"Maybe you shouldn't draw so much."

I closed my sketch book, and put it on top of the desk.

He dropped a paper bag on my leg. I picked it up carefully, and pulled out a magazine. It was a _Playboy_.

"Soda – "

"Listen, kid, I know you haven't been around girls much, so they can seem scary … but they're not. They're real nice." He tapped the magazine. "Look at 'em and try. You need to get used to it. Trust me."

I flipped through all the glossy women, but paused at the centerfold. I'd seen naked women before; it wasn't the first time someone showed me a skin mag, and I'd seen my share of nudes in books and the museum. Of course, this was unlike anything I'd seen at the Philbrook. The woman was taken out of context, floating in white space. It was two whole pages of just one woman, with her arms awkwardly bent away from her sides. It was an unnatural pose. She reminded me of Nancy in _Attack of the 50-Foot Woman_. She was wearing swimsuit bottoms and no top, but what stood out the most was her expression.

"She looks sad."

"No, she doesn't."

"Look at her eyes."

"You're not supposed to be looking at her face, Pony." He sounded impatient, and implored, "You just got to try."

I did try that night, but it didn't work.

* * *

School started up just a week or so later, and Mark cut another deal with his supplier, against my better judgement. He had only just broke even selling a hundred dollars' worth of pills. He said it'd be easier to sell now that I was in classes with Socs again. It was, but it's not a great feeling when you get messed up in stuff like that, and you can't ever get away from it, not even at school. I didn't like it.

The only part of school I did liked was Creative Writing, but even that felt strange.

For one thing, it was all girls and they were all older than me. I was the only boy in that class, and I felt funny about it. Since it was an elective, everyone knew I signed up too. And since you had to be a junior or a senior to take Creative Writing, and it was mostly seniors, they were all older than me. Cherry Valance was in it. But we hadn't talked. Mr. Syme seemed funny about that, like he would have warned me.

And don't get me wrong, I liked Mr. Syme, but it was uncomfortable to see him in class again, now that I knew him differently. If you've seen somebody's calves through the bottom of a bathroom stall with their pantlegs bunched up at their ankles, next to a similar pair of calves in the same stall, it's bound to be weird to hear them talking about points-of-view. First person, third person, second person – who is telling the story? And to whom? Why? Why is this a story worth telling? For them? For you? _"Be sure to remember the poet is not always the speaker,"_ Mr. Syme would say. I knew he had stories he would never tell.

I think it was uncomfortable for him too. I didn't talk to Mr. Syme much at Jack's or at school, really. Not as much as I wanted to. I wasn't sure how he felt. He was hot and cold with me, familiar one moment, stiff the next. I don't blame him. I'm sure it wasn't easy for him. He was a master at compartmentalizing, and that can throw you - when different parts of your life collide. I would know.

Still, I lingered after each class. I don't know why. It's just what I did.

One day, though I had no intention of doing so, I told him about the contest, he said, "That's incredible!" It was good to hear some excitement. I hadn't felt excited yet, and neither had Darry when I told him. Darry wasn't mean about it or anything, just baffled.

"I –" I glanced at the open door. "I didn't tell Mark. I'm not going to." I didn't want him to laugh at me, and I didn't want him to know about the money. I'm not sure why I wanted Mr. Syme to know this.

He nodded real slow. Then he open his mouth like he was going to say something, but a student came in for his Honors 10 class.


End file.
